The foreign agent was left without a precedent – Newspaper Kommersant No. 239 (7440) dated 12/23/2022

The Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow dismissed former municipal deputy Yulia Galyamina’s claim to remove the status of a foreign agent. Ms. Galyamina was the first of hundreds of holders of the status to try to challenge her inclusion in the register of the Ministry of Justice after the entry into force of the new law on foreign agents. She stated the discriminatory nature of the status, the violation of her right to teach and freely express her opinion. The Ministry of Justice objected that Ms. Galyamina received foreign funding from an organization undesirable in the Russian Federation.

The lawsuit of Yulia Galyamina, a former municipal deputy of Moscow and a lecturer at the Higher School of Economics, was received by the Zamoskvoretsky Court of the capital on December 1. On the same day, a new law on foreign agents came into force, combining the norms that were in force at that time and excluding the criterion of “foreign funding” as a mandatory requirement for assigning status: now it is enough for the Ministry of Justice to declare that a person or foundation is under “foreign influence”. Also, under the new law, the Ministry of Justice abandoned four registers of foreign agents (for NGOs, media, individuals and associations without a legal entity) and published a single register (.pdf), which included all people and organizations with the status of a foreign agent, even previously excluded from the registers: at their expense, 507 positions in the new list; “acting foreign agents” in the register 339.

None of the 168 organizations and individuals excluded from the register of foreign agents has previously been able to challenge the status in court; The Ministry of Justice removes it only when a foreign agent submits documents on the absence of foreign funding during the year.

Yulia Galyamina was made to the register of media-foreign agents in September, when it was already known about the preparation of a new law. Her defense decided to challenge the status in December to draw the attention of the court to new restrictions on foreign agents. We recall that there are 18 of them. “Prohibitions on teaching at a state educational institution, organizing public events, participating in various forms of election campaigns are directly applicable to Yulia,” court lawyer Maxim Olenichev, who represents the interests of Ms. Galyamina, told Kommersant. her essence as a politician, public figure and teacher”.

In the lawsuit, Yulia Galyamina pointed to discrimination in connection with the assigned status and the inability to freely express her opinion.

Her lawyers spoke of a “chain of events of persecution for political reasons”: in 2021, the court found their client guilty of repeatedly violating the rules for holding rallies (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and sentenced her to two years probation (the term expires on January 23, 2023) . Because of the verdict, the politician was unable to continue working as a deputy of the Timiryazevsky district of Moscow.

The decision to include Yulia Galyamina in the register of foreign agents was taken by the Ministry of Justice on the basis of certificates from Roskomnadzor and Rosfinmonitoring. The defense requested that the compiler of the certificate from the RKN by the name of Wagner be summoned for judicial interrogation, but the court refused the petition. Representatives of the Ministry of Justice who participated in the meeting explained that they recognized Ms. Galyamina as a foreign media agent because of the 15 thousand rubles transferred to her in 2020 by the Heinrich Böll Foundation (the foundation is recognized in the Russian Federation as an undesirable organization). Yulia Galyamina told the court that she did not remember if she had ever received money from abroad.

The court refused to remove the status of a foreign agent from Yulia Galyamina. Mr. Olenichev explained to Kommersant that the defense intends to appeal the decision on appeal, and the lawyers will choose a strategy after receiving the reasoning part of the decision, which the court must submit within five days.

Maria Starikova