State Duma deputies must warn about their vacation abroad

State Duma deputies were obliged to notify the leadership of the chamber and the commission for monitoring the reliability of information on income from trips abroad. Corresponding amendments to the State Duma regulations were adopted at a meeting on January 24 at the suggestion of the chairman of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin.

Amendments were made to Art. 31 regulations of the State Duma. According to them, deputies, except for members of the Council of the Duma, chairmen of committees and commissions of the State Duma, are required to notify in writing the commission for monitoring the reliability of information about income about the planned trip abroad, except for business trips by order of the chairman of the State Duma. The rest are obliged to notify the speaker of the State Duma about the planned departure from Russia - this obligation is absent only if this business trip is organized by order of the chairman of the State Duma.

Volodin proposed to amend the regulations at the beginning of the meeting on January 24 when considering the agenda of the lower house of parliament. This consideration was held in a mode closed to journalists. Deputy Mikhail Matveev (KPRF) announced the speaker's proposal on his Telegram channel. One of the deputies says that at the beginning of the meeting, Volodin said that he had previously discussed this idea with the leaders of the factions, and they supported it. Among other things, he invited them to study which of the deputies went abroad for the New Year holidays.

According to the interlocutor of Vedomosti in the State Duma, several deputies, according to some sources, went abroad for holidays on New Year's holidays.

At the beginning of the plenary session, all factions supported this proposal, Viktor Pinsky, head of the Duma control commission, said. Communist Aleksey Kurinny asked why the heads of the committees would notify the speaker of the State Duma, and the rest of the deputies - the commission on income control. “This mechanism divides deputies into different classes,” Kurinny believes. In addition, he asked who Speaker Volodin would notify about trips.

Vedomosti wrote that in March 2022, United Russia State Duma deputies were unofficially obliged to warn the faction's leadership about all planned trips abroad. And in June, travel abroad was tightened for employees of the State Duma apparatus and assistants to deputies. When applying for a vacation, they must indicate that "no vacation abroad is planned." “If you indicate that a vacation abroad is planned, then, most likely, they will not be allowed to go on vacation,” says a source in the State Duma.

Over the past month, there have been several high-profile situations related to the rest of regional deputies abroad. On January 24, a deputy of the Kursk Regional Duma, Maxim Vasilyev, resigned as deputy chairman of the committee on budget and taxes. This was announced in his Telegram channel by the Governor of the Kursk region Roman Starovoit. At the beginning of the year, a video of his vacation in Mexico got on the social network.

After that, Starovoit demanded to consider his behavior at the commission in the regional Duma, and the secretary of the General Council of United Russia, Andrey Turchak, called his behavior "the height of cynicism." Vasiliev himself said that the video was recorded for relatives and was not designed for a wide audience. And Denis Dovzhenko, a deputy of the Vologda Legislative Assembly, was expelled from the supporters of United Russia after he published a photo from a vacation in Dubai in early January. The deputy himself said that he was on vacation, according to the recommendations of the doctors, his child had to be taken to the sea.