Two State Duma deputies will be deprived of their powers for absenteeism for the first time since 2016

The relevant commissions of the State Duma recommended on Tuesday that the chamber deprive Vadim Belousov (A Just Russia – For Truth) and Vasily Vlasov (LDPR) of their deputy mandates. The Ethics Commission found that both violated parliamentary standards by being absent from their committee meetings for more than 30 days. Vadim Belousov, sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison, was indeed not present at the meetings, but Vasily Vlasov called what was happening as revenge for his political position. The LDPR leadership denies this motive.

The formal reason for the proceedings was the non-participation of deputies in the current work of the State Duma: Vasily Vlasov was accused of being absent from meetings of the commission on regulations, Vadim Belousov – of the committee on protection of competition. Amendments to the law on the status of a deputy, allowing for the termination of a deputy’s powers for systematic (more than 30 days) failure to fulfill duties, were adopted by the Duma in the spring of 2016. The only parliamentarian deprived of his mandate under the relevant article remains ex-Spravoross Ilya Ponomarev, who lost his status immediately after the adoption of the amendments (wanted, included in the list of extremists and terrorists and in the register of foreign agents).

On October 31, the “disciplinary cases” of colleagues were reviewed by specialized commissions on ethics and mandate issues. According to Kommersant, members of the first formally confirmed the presence of misconduct on the part of their colleagues, the second recommended that the lower chamber deprive Messrs. Belousov and Vlasov of their parliamentary powers.

Vadim Belousov, sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison for taking a bribe, was not present at the trial: the deputy is hiding from justice, his whereabouts are unknown. But Vasily Vlasov, despite the lack of support from the faction, attended both meetings. As Kommersant’s source in the ethics commission reported, “the essence of the claims presented,” the deputy “could not object to anything”: “He could not deny that he missed meetings, and focused his speech on explaining the reason for the absences.” The commission, however, considered the colleague’s arguments “insignificant” and did not take them into account, explained Kommersant’s interlocutor. He also emphasized that the duties of a deputy are not only to attend plenary sessions and work with voters (with which Vasily Vlasov had no problems), but also to work in committees and commissions: “And if the deputy does not do any of this , this may already serve as a basis for making a decision on termination of powers.” According to the rules commission, he was absent from its meetings for more than 40 days, “and these are systematic absences,” the source added.

“We supported the decision of the ethics commission: all for colleague Vlasov, three – communists – abstained, all for Belousov, one abstained,” Otari Arshba, chairman of the commission on mandate issues, told Kommersant following the results of its meeting. He added that both the initiator of the appeal to the ethics commission, Viktor Pinsky, and one of the defendants in the proceedings, Vasily Vlasov, were invited to the discussion. “We listened to Vlasov’s colleague and recommended that he voice all the arguments that he has during the consideration at the chamber,” said Mr. Arshba and advised “not to look for any politics,” since “this is a matter of elementary discipline.”

“This is just a game to get me out,” Mr. Vlasov assured Kommersant after a meeting of the credentials commission. When asked who ordered this “game,” the deputy answered: “It seems to me, the party. I think that (chairman of the LDPR Leonid.— “Kommersant”) Slutsky. Because they immediately said that they would support this decision.” Vasily Vlasov believes that he caused dissatisfaction by asking “unnecessary questions.” He noted that he was reproached for his absence for more than 30 days in 2022: “Why didn’t you raise the issue before? Just now, when I started performing, they decided to remove me?” The deputy also mentioned “other conflicts in the party,” as well as “cleansing operations” in the regions.

“Deputies have never been deprived of office on such far-fetched grounds,” Mr. Vlasov later wrote on Telegram. “I attended 97.5% of the meetings in the last convocation and 98.5% of the meetings in this one.” He also pointed out that “in this way it is possible to deprive all those who are undesirable of their mandates”: “Have I ever been a traitor? He always guarded the interests of citizens. Even if it was dangerous. Apparently, he didn’t take the burden by himself.”

Leonid Slutsky, in a conversation with journalists, rejected the accusations of a fellow party member: “He may still say the wrong thing. Of course this is not true. There is a rule of law: he did not go to the commission where he is registered.” The leader of the LDPR has not yet announced who will receive Mr. Vlasov’s mandate, but regarding the possible expulsion of Vasily Vlasov from the party, he promised that “the party will discuss and then make a decision.”

21-year-old Vasily Vlasov was elected to the Duma in 2016 on the Moscow regional list of the Liberal Democratic Party. Before that, he worked as an assistant and head of the reception of the party founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and also headed the All-Russian youth organization of the LDPR, where he had previously made a consistent career. In 2019, the young parliamentarian became the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Natural Resources, Property and Land Relations, and in March 2021 he took the post of first deputy head of the Duma faction of the LDPR (then Vladimir Zhirinovsky). According to Kommersant, this appointment was the reason for the conflict between Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his son Igor Lebedev, who subsequently interrupted his political career in the party founded by his father.

According to an informed source of Kommersant, with the change of party leadership, Vasily Vlasov alternately lost the posts of deputy leader of the faction and head of the LDPR youth organization: “After Leonid Slutsky came to the leadership, it turned out that not everything was fine there, and, apparently, the removal served as a reason for personal grievances.” Mr. Vlasov’s relationship with the party leadership deteriorated even more noticeably due to the deputy’s open support of the Wagner PMC and its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who made critical statements about Leonid Slutsky, Kommersant’s interlocutor continues. Let us recall that in June, after the PMC mutiny, searches were carried out in the reception area of ​​deputy Vlasov. “I urgently ask the deputy to decide who he is with – with Russia and the president or with the traitors to the Motherland,” Leonid Slutsky wrote then in Telegram.

“Even at that moment it was clear that the question of his departure remained a matter of time,” says the Kommersant source, emphasizing that Mr. Slutsky “was tolerant and pointedly indifferent to the situation.” In the course of analyzing the work of the “at fault” deputies, it was established that Vasily Vlasov “violates elementary norms and discipline,” the source summarizes: “When they came to Leonid Eduardovich with the question of what to do, he said that if disciplinary norms were violated and “that in this case the powers are terminated, the faction will not interfere with this.”

As for Vadim Belousov, the proposal to deprive him of his powers precisely in connection with a violation of discipline, as Kommersant reported, may indicate that significant procedural violations were committed during the criminal prosecution of the deputy. Fellow party members of Mr. Belousov and his lawyers note that, contrary to the requirements of the law on the status of a deputy, the parliamentarian’s case was brought to court without the permission of the State Duma.

Ksenia Veretennikova, Grigory Leiba