MOSCOW, April 10 (Itar-Tass) - The State Duma offers to introduce responsibility for the non-governmental organizations – ‘foreign agents’ for not making public the monetary funds transferred to them. Deputy from the LDPR Maxim Rokhmistrov has put forward this initiative in his ten-minute speech, which is permitted to the factions for political statements at the beginning of a plenary meeting.
“Let’s supplement the law on ‘foreign agents’ with additional responsibility for not reporting and not making public those monetary flows, which are transferred to them and how they are spent,” the lawmaker appealed to other deputies.
Meanwhile, in his view, “it would be right, if the chiefs of the non-governmental organizations make public their declarations with their incomes and expenses.” “I look with surprise that many people turned it in their professional activities and are far from being poor. Our citizens are aware about it,” he affirmed. “They are still convinced that the deputies are ‘fat cats’ and allegedly poor, selfless chiefs of the non-governmental organizations spend all these monetary funds for poor children and are trying to save them from the influence of the streets. The situation changed and there are fewer children in the streets since then,” Rokhmistrov noted.
On April 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the German television and radio broadcasting company ARD that 654 non-governmental organizations operate in Russia, about one billion dollars was transferred for their funding from abroad for the last four months alone. He acknowledged that he was unaware until recently how much money is transferred from abroad for the operation of these organizations.
On the same day, deputy from United Russia and author of the last year’s resounding amendments in the legislation on non-governmental organizations, Mikhail Starshinov, proposed to confiscate the money from the non-governmental organizations and not registered as ‘foreign agents’. The deputy told Itar-Tass that he analyzed the law practice over this law on non-governmental organizations – ‘foreign agents’. “To my mind, to do it more efficiently, it would be good to fix material responsibility in the legislation regarding those organizations, which are under the effect of this law,” and do not produce a clear information about the sources of the monetary funds from abroad, he explained.
In particular, in the view of Starshinov, the monetary funds received by such non-governmental organizations “should be confiscated compulsorily and transferred, for instance, in a fund, from which they will be redistributed by representatives of honest non-governmental organizations for more prioritized trends of their activities, for instance, the work with children and with disabled people and in the spheres they will found needed.”
The deputy noted that “the Russian state authorities should not be a regulator of this sphere,” but did not rule out that “representatives of the Public Chamber could work in this fund.” “First of all, this should be representatives of honest non-governmental organizations. Let them decide for themselves what trends will be prioritized,” Starshinov said in conclusion.