State Duma Committee supported new toughening of laws on foreign agents

On Monday, the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation recommended the adoption of an amendment to the Criminal Code (CC), Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) and Administrative Code (CAO) concerning the activities of foreign agents, as well as citizens and organizations that help them circumvent the prohibitions in force in the legislation. . The date of the first reading has not yet been determined.

On April 26, another initiative on foreign agents was submitted to the State Duma by a group of deputies from the Duma Commission on Combating Foreign Intervention, headed by its chairman Vasily Piskarev (“United Russia”). A package of five bills contained amendments to laws “About non-profit organizations” And “On control over the activities of persons under foreign influence”as well as to Criminal, Criminal Procedure And Administrative codes. It is expected that by the end of June all bills will be adopted, but the first two have not yet been considered by the relevant committees for the development of civil society and security.

Recall that the authors want to allow the activities of only those foreign and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia that have Russian subdivisions officially registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.

Participation in the work of NGOs without them will be punishable by law. For the first violations, Russians will face administrative fines, and foreigners will also be expelled from Russia. In the event of a third violation in one year, there will be a reason for a criminal case: participation in the activities of an NGO will threaten with imprisonment for up to two years, and organization of its work – up to three years.

At a meeting of the State Construction Committee, amendments to the Criminal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Code of Administrative Offenses were presented by one of the co-authors of the initiative, Andrey Lugovoy (LDPR). The purpose of the bill is to strengthen the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, he recalled: “Working to undermine the constitutional and economic foundations of our country without registering representative offices, they (NGOs.— “b”) try to hide their activities from the attention of regulatory authorities and do not report on ongoing activities. Angelica Glazkova (CPRF) asked for an example of such organizations, and also asked if it was known what damage they had caused by their activities. Mr. Lugovoi found it difficult to answer, but noted that it was about “those non-profit organizations that are not registered, but carried out their work, some of them were recognized as undesirable.” He also announced the links of such organizations with the US and British intelligence agencies. Yuri Sinelshchikov (CPRF) said he would refrain from supporting the bill because it was against the principle of prejudice. He was supported by Mrs. Glazkova and another communist, Vyacheslav Markhaev. However, the committee supported the bill with a majority vote.

Then Andrei Lugovoy spoke about the draft law on administrative liability for those who help foreign agents to circumvent the prohibitions established for them by law.

For the first time, such citizens or organizations will face an order from the Ministry of Justice, but failure to comply with it will result in fines: for citizens – up to 50 thousand rubles, for officials – up to 100 thousand rubles, for legal entities – up to 300 thousand rubles. Vasily Piskarev explained that, for example, this applies to those who allow foreign agents to teach at universities (foreign agents are prohibited from doing this). “We have a lot of bookstores here. Many foreign agents continue to publish books without any indication that the foreign agent wrote them. They don’t check this in the bookstore,” Andrey Lugovoi added. Ms. Glazkova asked about the statistics of non-compliance with the instructions, to which the co-author of the initiative replied that there was none, and suddenly switched to another topic: “Everyone has the Yandex voice assistant Alisa. You will tell her – “Alice”, turn on the songs about Bandera for me. Dozens of songs will pop up for you. And for every song you listen to, you pay money.” “We won’t ask why you listen to such songs,” Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the committee on state building, put in and suggested returning to the text of the bill. The Committee supported him, only Anzhelika Glazkova abstained from voting.

Ksenia Veretennikova