Head commission on «foreign interference», Deputy Vasily Piskarev announced amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offenses to the State Duma, which would introduce punishment for «the creation and participation in the activities of branches of foreign NGOs that are not registered in Russia.»
According to Piskarev, participation in the work of an unregistered branch of a non-governmental organization will face administrative fines: up to 5,000 for Russian citizens and up to 50,000 for foreigners.
Creation of such a branch or repeated violation of an administrative article on participation in its work will face imprisonment for up to three years.
Thus, the work of unregistered representative offices of foreign NGOs will be equated with «undesirable organizations», whose members are now prosecuted under articles 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and 284.1 of the Criminal Code. In the case of the latter, donations to such organizations were also criminalized, and the maximum terms in the colony were twice as long.
Separately, the deputies proposed adding as a ground on which the Ministry of Justice could refuse to register a branch of an NGO, cases when an organization within three years before that, they were excluded from the register “for violations of the law.” After the start of the war, for this reason, the Russian branches of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Bell Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment were closed.
“It is obvious that a foreign NGO that deliberately refuses to register its branch with the Ministry of Justice, that is, to act in in accordance with the legislation of our country, cannot pursue any good goals,” said deputy Piskarev.
The amendments will also introduce into the Code of Administrative Offenses “penalties for failure to comply with the legal order of the Ministry of Justice to eliminate violations of the law by foreign agents within the prescribed period.”< /p>
The document has not yet appeared in the database of new bills of the State Duma.