CSO of the Week: League of Voters designated a ‘foreign agent’ NGO

Week-ending 30 October 2020

The League of Voters was added this week to the list of so-called ‘foreign agent’ NGOs. Accoкding to the Ministry of Justice’s website, the NGO received funds from ‘a foreign citizen’, was engaged in activities that complied with and did not comply with its charter, had as the aims of its acitivites ‘Influencing the development and implementation of government policy, the membership of government bodies, local government bodies, influencing their decisions and actions’, and the forms of its activity were ‘Distribution, including by the use of modern techologies, of opinions about decsisions and the policy carried out by government bodies.’ There are current 69 NGOs on the list of ‘foreign agent NGOs.’

RAPSI, Wednesday, 28 October 2020:  The Justice Ministry of Russia on Wednesday added the League of Voters Foundation to the list of NGOs acting as foreign agents, the Ministry’s press service told RAPSI. The NGO entered the register after an unscheduled documentary audit conducted by the Justice Ministry. The League of Voters Foundation was founded in 2012 by journalist Sergey Parkhomenko.

The League of Voters describes itself on its Facebook page in the following way:

“The main idea of the League is an honest country. The League fights for honest elections, honest courts, honest media, honest police, honest relations between the state and the citizen. The League does not set itself any political goals. It does not represent the interests of any party or presidential candidate.”

The League of Voters [Лига избирателей] is a Russian NGO founded in 2012 to primarily to monitor observance of electoral rights. Among its 16 founders were Leonid Parfenov, Yury Shevchuk, Grigory Chkhartishvili, Tatyana Lazareva and Sergei Parkhomenko. For more information see the League of Voters’ Facebook page and Wikipedia.

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