7 November 2024
The Duma and the presidential administration want to leverage the banking system in order to deprive unpatriotic citizens of income
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
The State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced legislative initiatives aimed at ‘foreign agents’ and those having left Russia – so called relocatees – who, while not on the Ministry of Justice’s official list, are described as “having left the country, who speak out negatively about Russia.” “Those who try to destroy Russia, insult its citizens, and participants in the special military operation, should not be allowed to profit at the hands of our country”, Volodin explained as the motive behind the drawing up of a draft bill, which at the time of writing is still not on the State Duma database.
Individuals, recognised as ‘foreign agents’ and carrying out intellectual activities will be obligated – irrespective of where they currently reside – to open special ruble accounts, to which any “payments for works of science, literature and art, performances and phonograms, messages in radio or television broadcasts, inventions and trademarks» will be received”. Volodin was not forthcoming on his Telegram channel as to whether there will be any spending limit on these funds. Those who have already left will be exempt from such a requirement: technically, they will not be able to access their money abroad, and those recognized as “foreign agents” will not be able to open special accounts in the Russian Federation.
However, the “slanderers” are bracing themselves for an even more severe measure, one that prohibits them from “profiteering from movable and immovable assets, as well as the sale thereof.”
As to how this is permissible from a legal standpoint, in the absence of a bill, remains unclear, but it is most likely that in this case the future law will be combined with practice at the level of Sberbank, albeit it is not a part of the state “law enforcement bodies”.
This is not the first attempt to tighten the purse strings of those less patriotically-inclined towards Russia. As such, in December of last year, the Basmanny district court in Moscow seized the accounts – amounting in total to 6 million rubles – of Boris Akunin’s wife in connection with a criminal case against the writer on grounds of “justifying terrorism”. Meanwhile in February, the AST publishing house suspended royalty payments to the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya (who has been added to the register of “foreign agents” by the Russian authorities), allegedly in connection with the transfer of part of the funds to Ukraine.
The announced draft bill will provide a legal basis for this and other similar cases – up until now such decisions have been taken on a purely arbitrary basis.
On Thursday Volodin promised that the draft bill concerning intellectual property of “foreign agents” would begin to be examined by the Duma the following week. It’s still unclear whether this has to do with two different bills or one to which amendments may be made in second reading.
The initiatives, announced by Volodin are very much products of today’s state ideology (which incidentally is prohibited pursuant to Article 13 of the Constitution), but contradict the principles of copyright and property rights. However, given the current patriotic position of the Constitutional Court, this appears to be viewed as something that can be ignored.
President Putin has repeatedly stated that the legislation on “foreign agents” is aimed exclusively at financial transparency and does not limit their political or other rights in any way. Meanwhile, in practice, there are already known cases of “agents” being struck off from government service under the pretext that their wages are supposedly “state support” that they are not entitled to receive.
Translated by Nathalie Wilson
