MOSCOW, September 4. /TASS/. A Moscow district justice court has imposed a fine of 600,000 roubles (roughly $9,000) on the Memorial human rights center for violating the Russian law on Non-government organizations listed as foreign agents, a source in the court told TASS on Friday.
Memorial, which is on the list of non-profit organizations acting as foreign agents, is charged with distribution of materials published with no indication of their origin from an organization put on the list of foreign agents.
The law on foreign agent NGOs was adopted in the summer of 2012. It binds non-government organizations carrying out political activities and financed from abroad to receive a status of "foreign agents" and be put on a special register. Such organizations are obliged to indicate their status while publishing their materials in the internet and media outlets. Violations of this requirement are punishable by a fine.
Originally, registration in the special register was voluntary but amendments to the law passed in June 2014 vested the Russian Justice Ministry with the right to include into the register of foreign agents the organizations that complied with the definition of such organization but which had not applied for that status.