The Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit to suspend the registration of Konstantin Babkin’s party

The Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court (SC) to suspend the registration of the Party of Businessman Konstantin Babkin for two months, according to a message on the organization’s website. The claim card has not yet appeared on the Supreme Court website; Vedomosti sent a request to the Ministry of Justice. As Alexey Lapushkin, secretary of the party’s federal council, explained to Vedomosti, on November 9, a copy of the administrative claim was sent to the organization’s email.

A representative of the Party of Action explained that from February to June 2023, the federal Ministry of Justice and territorial departments carried out inspections of branches. “No significant violations were identified. The regional branches successfully passed the inspections, all the requirements of the territorial bodies of the Ministry of Justice were fulfilled in full,” Vedomosti’s interlocutor emphasized.

At the same time, based on the results of the federal audit, a warning was sent with the requirement to eliminate violations, re-elect the working bodies and make changes to the charter before September 1, 2023. On the website, Babkin was listed as “party leader”, and the Ministry of Justice demanded that the name be replaced with “chairman” in accordance with the charter.

On August 17, the party held a congress, at which it eliminated all violations, which it notified the Ministry of Justice on August 29. The party did not receive a response from the department. In the absence of comments from the supervisory authority, the warning can be considered fulfilled, said political scientist Alexander Kynev.

“Currently, the Ministry of Justice’s claims relate to the holding of the August congress. The Ministry of Justice suggested that due to the alleged violation of the order of convening, the congress itself was invalid. At the same time, checking the party’s documentation and all decisions of the federal council from 2020 to 2023, the Ministry of Justice did not identify any violations,” the party’s response to Vedomosti’s request says.

“The party is aimed at constructive work with the Ministry of Justice. We continue party work without changes; preparations for a congress are underway to re-amend the charter,” explained Lapushkin.

The Party of Action was founded in 2010, then it was twice denied registration: this was only possible after the liberalization of party legislation in 2012 (in particular, the number of party members required for registration was reduced to 500). Babkin is the president of New Commonwealth LLC and the Rosspetsmash association, chairman of the board of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for industrial development and economic competitiveness.

Party representatives called their goal to help industrial and agricultural enterprises in Russia. The party supports the special operation, criticizes the Central Bank, and promotes the patriotic agenda (for example, Babkin hosted the Moscow Economic Forum, among the guests of which was Igor Strelkov, who was accused in the summer of 2023 of calls for extremist activity under Article 280 of the Criminal Code). Now the party has more than 60 regional branches.

In 2019, Babkin told Kommersant that the party was accustomed to constantly being under the threat of liquidation: party lists are regularly not allowed to participate in elections to legislative assemblies. The party’s path is quite unusual, says Kynev. At the federal level, it did not participate in any campaign; it was quite active in regional and local elections; it is, in his words, “not a dummy party”: “Moreover, party lists were actively removed from the elections – probably just so that the party did not receive benefits for federal elections. Therefore, single-mandate members participated in elections to legislative assemblies; the party often selected local oppositionists from dismissed officials.”

For example, in 2023, the party list was not registered in Yakutia (the party is represented in the region by the famous local politician Vitaly Obedin). However, recently this party has been less visible, say the head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, Mikhail Vinogradov, and the head of Minchenko Consulting, Evgeny Minchenko. Political scientist Alexander Nemtsev believes that the niche of the party of entrepreneurs is occupied by the Party of Growth of Boris Titov and the “New People” of Alexei Nechaev, and therefore there is no electoral interest in the Party of Business in this sense: “This is a personalist party, a personal PR project of one specific person.”