The Ministry of Justice drew up a report on the violation of the procedure for the activities of a foreign agent at the Levada Center.
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The Ministry of Justice drew up a protocol at the Levada Center (ANO Yuri Levada Analytical Center, included in the register of foreign agents) under the article on violation of the procedure for the activities of a foreign agent. Sociologists made mistakes in preparing the necessary reports, Denis Volkov, director of the center, told Kommersant. The organization faces a fine of 300,000 to 500,000 rubles—the amount of the penalty will be determined by the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow.
Uniform reporting requirements for foreign agents are stipulated law “On Control over the Activities of Persons Under Foreign Influence”, which came into force in December 2022. A specific extensive list of information and the procedure for their provision are approved by order of the Ministry of Justice No. 304 (dated November 29, 2022): together with all annexes containing forms to be filled out, the document occupies 116 pages.
According to these norms, a foreign agent is obliged to submit an up-to-date report on the activity, its goals, the structure of the territory within which this activity is carried out. In addition, the Ministry of Justice requires information from organizations-foreign agents about the founders and personal composition of both governing bodies and employees. The most extensive part of the reporting is data on the sources, purposes and volumes of distribution of funding (including those received from legal entities that are residents of the Russian Federation).
The problems of the Levada Center turned out to be connected with filling out all the necessary documentation.
“Indeed, we made a mistake in reporting, but not from evil – we simply did not take into account the updated and more complicated requirements for information that must be submitted, and submitted a report according to the old scheme,” admitted Denis Volkov, director of the organization, in an interview with Kommersant. According to him, the Levada Center was not given the opportunity to correct the mistake, but was immediately offered to sign a protocol on the violation. The sanction under the sane article (Article 19.34, part 2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses) for legal entities ranges from 300 thousand to 500 thousand rubles. A date for the hearing of the case has not yet been set.
The Yuri Levada Analytical Center was founded in 2003 by people from the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM), who were dissatisfied with the dismissal (dictated, in their opinion, for political reasons) of Yury Levada, the longtime head of VTsIOM.
The non-state center immediately took the place of one of the most recognizable sociological services in the country. The power ratings published by Levada were often lower than those of the other two main Russian pollsters, VTsIOM and the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). In 2016, on the eve of the elections to the State Duma, the Ministry of Justice turned on “Levada Center” in the register of foreign agents. The department indicated that the center is involved in political activities in the interests of foreign organizations from which it receives funding. The new status forced sociologists to abandon traditional pre-election polls during election campaigns.
Since the beginning of the special military operation in 2022, the Levada Center has been publishing data from regular surveys on the attitude of Russians to the NVO – such data was published, in particular, in July 2023. In the organization itself, these publications are in no way connected with claims from the Ministry of Justice.
Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, does not now see much contrast between the data of the Levada Center and other sociological services. “And the interpretations by the Levada Center of their data are sometimes even more advantageous for the authorities, especially since the FOM and VTsIOM are not very active in terms of interpretation,” the expert adds. But both the authorities and their critics retain the inertia of perceiving the data of the Levada Center as more negative, the political scientist believes.
According to judicial statistics, last year the courts considered 42 protocols on violation of the procedure for the activities of an NPO acting as a foreign agent. 14 organizations and four officials were fined for this in the amount of 9.4 million rubles.
Recall Also, at the end of 2021, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, at the suit of the Ministry of Justice, liquidated the International Memorial and the Human Rights Center Memorial, entered in the register of foreign agents, precisely for repeated violations of the requirements for foreign agents, which was preceded by the drawing up of several administrative protocols against human rights defenders.
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