Golos co-chairman Melkonyants brought in for interrogation at TFR – Kommersant

Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of Golos, after a search in a Moscow apartment, was taken for interrogation in the status of a suspect in the building of the Investigative Committee, lawyer Mikhail Biryukov said. The interrogation is being conducted as part of an investigation into a case on the organization of the work of an NGO, recognized in the Russian Federation as undesirable.

“The suspect is being interrogated,” Mikhail Biryukov, lawyer for Mr. Melkonyants, specified to Mediazone (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents).

Earlier today, on August 17, it became known that the apartment of Grigory Melkonyants, as well as 14 Golos employees in eight regions, including Moscow, Kazan and St. Petersburg, were searched. Regarding Mr. Melkonyants excited a criminal case on organizing the work of an undesirable NGO (Part 3, Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code). The maximum penalty for this part is imprisonment for up to six years.

On September 27, 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia recognized the activities of the European Network of Election Observation Organizations as undesirable. On the same day, Golos suspended its membership in this organization.

The movement for the protection of the rights of voters “Voice” was formed in 2013. On August 18, 2021, the Ministry of Justice entered Golos into the register of foreign agents. A year later, Roskomnadzor blocked the movement’s website. As a reason for blocking, the department indicated that the site published “inaccurate socially significant information about the Russian military operation in Ukraine.”