MOSCOW, September 11 (Itar-Tass) – Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, gathers for the first plenary meeting of the 2012 autumn session later in the day.
Formally, the new season in parliament began August 26, but the lawmakers spent the first week in the regions where they had been elected. The week after that was devoted to work in committees and commissions.
“The autumn session will be meaty, intensive and tense,” Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin promised to reporters Monday after a meeting of the Duma Council.
He recalled that, apart from the regular bills, the lawmakers will have to consider a big number of legislative initiatives submitted to the Duma during the fourth and fifth convocations.
The agenda of Tuesday’s plenary session includes the introduction of amendments to the Code of Administrative Violations envisioning fines for infringement on regulations for the status of a foreign agent for nonprofit organizations.
Initially, the amendments were part and parcel of a resounding bill that assigned the status of foreign agents to nonprofit organizations, which the Duma passed at the very end of the spring session but they were removed from the text of the Code of Administrative Violations later and were put up for the Duma’s consideration during the autumn session.
According to the bill, a failure of a nonprofit organization acting as a foreign agent to furnish appropriate state agencies with all the necessary information would be subject to fines ranging from 3,000 rubles to 5,000 rubles for individuals, 30,000 rubles to 50,000 rubles for officials, and 500,000 rubles to 1,000,000 rubles for legal entities.
If a foreign agent is not placed in a special register of organizations, its executives will have to pay a penalty of 300,000 to 500,000 rubles. Legal entities will be subject to the fines varying from 300,000 rubles to 500,000 rubles.
Sanctions will also be imposed if a nonprofit organization uploads information in the Internet without notifying the visitors that it is a foreign agent.
If a foreign agent continues working in spite of a decision to suspend its activity, its founders will be subjected to fines of 30,000 rubles to 50,000 rubles and ordinary members, to fines of 3,000 to 5,000 rubles.
Also Tuesday, Deputy Speaker Alexander Zhukov will present a draft program of the Duma’s work during the autumn session and the agenda for the period of September 11 to September 28.