18 December 2024
During the struggle against “traitors to the motherland,” the State Duma speaker’s Telegram channel has been compared to the Constitution and the Civil Code
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
On 17 December, the State Duma passed immediately on the second and third readings a bill introducing new amendments to Federal Law No. 255 of 14 July 2022, “On monitoring the activities of individuals under foreign influence.” For some reason, the subhead to this masterpiece of legislative thought explains that it has been passed “for the purposes of defending state security and preventing foreign interference in the domestic affairs of the Russian Federation.”
In fact, its objective is much more prosaic. Once the Federation Council approved and the president signed them, the amendments, according to the poorly concealed intention of the deputies who proposed them, were supposed to doom hundreds of Russians “who are under foreign influence” to wretched poverty and instill fear in those oppositionally inclined citizens who have been holding their tongue and have yet to be added to the proscription lists. Today, “foreign agent” status stigmatizes more than 400 physical persons, but if the Justice Ministry continues to expand that register on Fridays at its previous rate, then by 1 March 2025, when the law goes into effect, there will be a total of more than 500.
Originally, the bill, submitted to the Duma on 14 November by 429 deputies across the board (given a 450 headcount), was aimed primarily at those cultural figures and journalists who after the special military operation began moved abroad and who continue from there to shoot critical arrows at their fatherland.
The draft provided for opening special accounts for them solely for the deposit of payments—fees and royalties—that accumulate from their creative activity.
However, the discussion in the Duma and outside its walls was accompanied by aggressive rhetoric about “enriching traitors to the motherland at her expense” (in fact, at the expense of their individual contractual partners; the motherland has nothing to do with this); proposals were also heard to extend the special accounts rule to funds from the sale and leasing by “agents” of real estate and vehicles they still own in Russia.
By the second and the immediate third reading, the bill had been supplemented by new amendments that affected income not only from creative activity and the sale and leasing of property but also from shares in commercial companies, dividends, and interest on deposits. The deputies unanimously supported these innovations without discussion. As was said at the trials against earlier “agents” in Stalin’s Soviet Union, “dogs deserve a dog’s (hungry) death”.
The amendments expanded in this way will affect not only those who have left but also “foreign agent” patriots who remain in Russia. Moreover, if abroad a “Russian agent” might still find means for subsistence (and many journalists, writers, actors, and directors, to say nothing of programmers, have made quite a bearable life for themselves in emigration), then inside Russia the amendments could completely strip their colleagues of the possibility of spending any money from their frozen “special accounts”.
After 1 March, any “agent” will be required to inform the purchaser (renter) of his apartment (vehicle) or other contractual partner about his impaired status and also to open a special account to which the buyer (contractual partner) will transfer the money. In the absence of an “agent” in physical form (most often in connection with their departure abroad), the “payer” himself will open a special account before transferring the money there, while a bank representative conducts an “identification of the new client.”
At the same time, as we have previously noted, the bill did not have—and the law passed does not either—a legal mechanism for blocking the special accounts of “foreign agents”. The websites of the Duma and state agencies link to the Telegram channel of Chair Vyacheslav Volodin, who has explained yet again that “a ‘foreign agent’ will be able to access these funds only after his ‘foreign agent’ status is lifted”. However, this does not follow from the law’s text.
The 429 deputies’ hesitancy is easily explained. In order to create such a mechanism they would have to rescind those parts of the Civil Code that regulate property rights, which include, as we know, the owner’s rights to the possession, use, and disposition (my italics. — L. N.) of their property, including, naturally, bank accounts.
Evidently for this reason, for the second (and immediate third) reading, the bill was detailed with a point saying that “the special procedure for depositing payments to and withdrawing funds from the special account” would be established by the Central Bank’s board of directors.
Here the Duma dumped an aching head onto a healthy one: the bank where “agents” would be allowed to open special accounts (probably Sberbank or VTB), more than likely, would simply block them without explanation.
These actions could, naturally, be appealed in court, but the courts would wriggle out of it somehow. Except for the Constitutional Court, but before that they would still have to get that far, and by then they could come up with something there, too (or political circumstances could change—anything might happen).
Due to their hasty passage, the amendments to the law on foreign influence are not consistent with other branches of law. For example, it is unclear
- whether only fees will be deposited in the special accounts or also regular salaries received by journalist-“agents” (actors, programmers, employees of technical research institutes, and so on);
- whether “foreign agents’” former spouses and children who own shares in an apartment can sell or exchange it;
- whether amendments to “foreign agents” apply to legal persons, and if so, then how they will be able to pay off loans, including salaries to personnel, and shut down their own store.
And so on. For now it is even hard to imagine all the problems that might arise in practice.
Naturally, “foreign agents” are “agents” because they look for loopholes and workarounds to laws—and this will necessitate additional checks but will not rule out corruption and fraud.
Was it so long ago that the president was explaining that the “foreign agent” legislation had as its goal only to ensure transparency for “foreign influence” and that the corresponding status in no way limited its bearers’ rights?
The strategy of those who stand behind the deputies consists in using mechanisms of alleged civil law as measures of administrative-legal and even criminal sanctions (depending on the gravity of the consequences). They think this strategy was successfully felt out and is functioning effectively. But this kind of assemblage discredits the Civil Code and the Constitution, and for now we cannot even conceive of its long-term consequences.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
