CONFUSING PICTURE FOR NGOS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MOSCOW 001197 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/29/2018 TAGS: PGOV KDEM SOCI RS SUBJECT: CONFUSING PICTURE FOR NGOS REF: 07 MOSCOW 5878 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Daniel A. Russell. Reason: 1.4 (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Three recent developments suggest that both the Federal Registration Service (FRS),which is charged with enforcing much of the amended NGO law, and the NGOs themselves continue to struggle with the law and the sometimes confusing requirements it has imposed. On the ONE hand, with the passage of the April 15 deadline for NGOs to submit their annual activity reports, the FRS has accommodated those NGOs struggling to meet the deadline. The Service has agreed that filings posted, even if not received, by April 15 will be considered on time. The FRS has also agreed to accept late filings without penalty if a reasonable excuse is presented. At the same time, the FRS's faulty statistics on the number of NGOs it has registered and de-registered over the last year, suggested that it is as overwhelmed by the volume of work as its clients. A further source of confusion for some NGOs is the FRS practice of interpreting some laws differently than the GOR ministries generally charged with enforcing them. To date, none of our partners in human rights, HEALTH or other activities has been targeted for de-registration or audit purposes. We will continue to advocate for the amendment of the burdensome reporting requirements. End summary. FRS Conciliatory on Deadlines -------------- ¶2. (U) April 15 was the deadline for all NGOs in Russia to file reports with the Federal Registration Service (FRS). Russian NGOs file ONE annual report whereas the burden on foreign NGOs is substantially heavier, with additional reporting obligations throughout the year (reftel). The reports must indicate activities in 2007, income and expenses, individuals in leadership positions, and any resources received from foreign sources. ¶3. (U) While the NGO law gives the FRS authority to seek the liquidation of a non-compliant NGO, the FRS announced that it would limit court procedures to the de-registration of inactive NGOs from the registration rolls, starting with those that did not file in 2006 or 2007. The FRS announced that it would accept late reports if an NGO had a valid reason for the late submission, and said that if an NGO had mailed its report by April 15, then it had fulfilled the requirements of the law, even if the report is not received until much later. The English-language newspaper The Moscow Times reported on April 21 that the FRS had extended the deadline by two weeks, although no official announcement to that effect was found on the FRS website. ¶4. (U) The deadline presented an opportunity for some NGOs to voice their displeasure with the burden of the annual report. Lev Ponomarev, head of the Movement for Human Rights, complained that the requirements imposed by the NGO law and the FRS were "suffocating civil society." Ponomarev alleged that his deputy spent about three weeks collecting and sorting documents for the annual submission. FRS Data on NGOs Appear Unreliable -------------- ¶5. (U) Recent data released by the FRS suggest that it is struggling as much with the cascade of data it must process as the NGOs which supply it. Darya Miloslavskaya, Program Coordinator of the USG-sponsored Civil Society Legal Support Program of the International Center for Non-profit Law told us that the FRS's statistics appear in some cases to be internally inconsistent. The FRS, for example, contends that it has denied about 13 percent of all registration applications, a percentage that does not tally with the indicated number of denials and/or the indicated number of registration actions recorded on the FRS website. In order for the 11,044 denials reported by the FRS to represent 13 percent of the total, the number of initial registrations would have had to be much higher than the 62,223 that the FRS website shows. FRS spokesmen said that improperly completed applications or insufficient documentation prompted most of the refusals. ¶6. (U) FRS data show there were 227,577 registered NGOs active as of January 1, 2008, a drop of about 12,000 in the course of a year. Moscow and St. Petersburg had the most registered NGOs with 18,505 and 16,663 respectively. The FRS also reported that about 13,000 NGOs were audited in 2007. Last year the FRS went to court to request de-registration of 8,300 NGOs, of which the courts approved 6,600 at the end of ¶2007. The FRS indicated that 5,400 of these NGOs had effectively ceased operations while the remainder had MOSCOW 00001197 002 OF 002 violated FRS regulations. We have canvassed our partners working on human rights, HEALTH and other issues and did not find any that had been targeted for de-registration or audit purposes. Define "Education" -------------- ¶7. (C) The NGO law gives the FRS wide powers to review NGO compliance not only with the federal NGO law but with the tax law, the law on extremism, and the law on education. In some cases, according to Miloslavskaya, the FRS has a history of interpreting laws quite differently from the ministries of original jurisdiction. For example, the FRS often interpreted seminars or practical training that NGOs provide to workers or volunteers as education and required that the affected NGOs conform to the law on education. However, the Ministry of Education itself does not acknowledge that occasional seminars, or training that do not lead to a degree, rise to the level of education. Efforts by NGOs to convince FRS officials of the need to bring the agency's interpretation into conformance with that of the Ministry of Education have, to date, not succeeded. Local Registration Limits NGO Movement -------------- ¶8. (C) Another source of confusion for some NGOs is the registration's territorial requirements. By law, an NGO must register in the region or regions in which it intends to operate. At times, however, the FRS has defined the work of an NGO to include not just the maintenance of an office in a particular region, but meetings with like-minded NGOs in other regions or travel to a region for a day or two of training. If the NGO has not registered to operate in the region of the meeting or training, the FRS could issue a written warning. Two written warnings give the FRS the option to seek a court-ordered liquidation of the NGO. Comment -------------- ¶9. (C) We will continue to advocate for the amendment of the NGO law, as factual evidence mounts regarding the unreasonable reporting burden it places on NGOs. RUSSELL