Ministry of Justice precludes the Association ‘Golos’ withdrawal from the Foreign Agents Registry – ‘Vedomosti’

The Association ‘Golos’ and the Fund ‘Golos-Ural’ were refused to be withdrawn from the Foreign Agents Registry, as the co-chairman of movement ‘Golos’ Grigory Melkonyants informed ‘Vedomosti’. The decision was based on the outcomes of inspections conducted by the Ministry of Justice in Moscow and Chelyabinsk region.

An organization is withdrawn from the registry, if in the last year NGO did not receive any foreign funding or did not participate in any political activities. The inspection of ‘Golos’ lasted from 13 July to 7 August. In 2014, the association was not engaged in any activities. Based on the accounting documents, for the year the organization in total received 2000 rubles from individuals. However in the inspection report there is a reference to open source infomation confirming that the board member of the movement ‘Golos’ Roman Udot, the coordinator of projects carried out by the Association and executive director of one of its associates, at the beginning of July 2014 received $ 4600 from the International Centre for Elections Studies established in Lithuania under the copyright agreements. Moreover the Ministry of Justice perceived the correspondents’ coopearation with the newspaper ‘Civic Voice’ as political activity, as they shape public opinion by contributing to statements and reports issued by the unregistered movement ‘Golos’. As a result of above mentioned, the association was refused to be withrawn from the registry, according to the letter issued by the director of the Department for NGO Affairs of RF Ministry of Justice Vladimir Titov.

‘The Ministry of Justice falsifies the facts: it is not indicated in the report that the organization receives foreign funding but the royalties received by Udot that has nothing to do with the organization are equated with it - while there are no reference to documents, supporting these conclusions’, - Melkonyants says. As for the ‘Civic Voice’, according to the Law on Mass Media, the newspaper is independent from the association, though the Fund for Democracy Support ‘Golos’ is the founder and owner of it.

On 27 July, ‘Golos-Ural’ applied for the withdrawal from the registry, the unscheduled inspection was conducted for the period beginning from 2 February upt to 27 July 2015 (the previous investigation was completed on July 7). According to the Ministry of Justice, the organization was still engaged in political activities as it held training for observers. Only Russians donated a little bit more than 200 000 rubles to the organization, according to the Fund manager Yurij Gurman. However, on April 6 the Ministry of Justice received a statement from the Federal Financial Monitoring Service informing that in February a foreign citizen transferred 1132 rubles to ‘Voice-Ural’ account using ‘Yandex. Money’, therefore, the organization cannot be withdrawn from the registry, as the Ministry of Justice concluded.

According to Gurman, the Ministry refused the organization to get acquainted with the statement issued by the Federal Financial Monitoring Service: ‘In September we were informed about the progress that had been made in the investigation, but no statement was metioned, although this information was allegedly revealed in April - we could return this donation or submit our objections. The persecution is ongoing and all means are used for dissolving the organization”. The contract template contains a clause stipulating that a donor is aware of the Law on Foreign Agents and that a person is a citizen of Russia, stressed Gurman: ‘I have a feeling that this is a provocation precluding our withdrawal from the registry. As everyone who donates to ‘Golos’ are aware of foreign agents issue and they unlikely would make such a transfer’. ‘Yandex.Money’ has no information supporting the allegation that this donation was made by a foreign citizen, as Melkonyants says: ‘Either the Ministry of Justice and Federal Financial Monitoring Service try to postpone a process of withdrawal or they are aware that it was done on purpose’. According to him, this is the first such case as before all of the claims were related with large donations, small payments were not tracked: 'So it is possible to invoke a provocation against any organization that collects money through crowdfunding and respectively to include it in the Foreign Agents Registry'.

When asked by ‘Vedomosti’, the Ministry of Justice confirmed that the association ‘Golos’ was refused to be withdrawn from the registry, but it had not yet received an inspection report concerning ‘Golos-Ural’.

The Law is formulated in a way that almost anything could implicate foreign funding, says lawyer Ramil Ahmetgaliev: ‘The inclusion of association in the Foreign Agent Regitry was illegitimate; an attempt to keep it in the registry implicates a political will for that’. The Law on Foreign Agents was adopted concidering ‘Golos’ case, as it was involved in Election observation in 2011, ‘supposedly delegitimising the elections’, says political analyst Alexei Makarkin: ‘The main target was one organization, its activities induced the law, therefore it was decided either to close or to compromise the organization. Later on it was opted to apply this mechanism in a broader scope’. If we talk about a donation of 1,000 rubles, it means ‘the organization activities were scrutinized under the microscope’, says the expert.

The original text (rus) is available on the website of ‘Vedomosti’