Chairman of the Commission Vasilii Piskarev
Vasily Ivanovich
noted that regional aspects of interference were
discussed at this meeting: “We examined the materials we received from the regions of our country on the facts of interference in internal affairs.”
He stated that the parliamentarians found 17 such regions. “In almost every district, there was interference in internal affairs,” said the Chairman of the Commission.
According to him, 12 European states and the USA took active steps.
“We found more than 50 legal entities and individuals, foreign or Russian, that have been paid from abroad, which in one way or another influenced the domestic policy of the regions,” he said.
Vasilii Piskarev informed about the attempts of these legal entities to create so-called bases or camps for training leaders of illegal protest rallies. He stressed that this issue should be legally regulated. Also, these legal entities are engaged in collecting information for subsequent use to incite interreligious, interethnic and other types of hatred. “There are a lot of attempts to the distort history, especially on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory,” the parliamentarian said. He also noted that attempts to interfere in the elections were discovered.
According to the Commission, these facts should be sent to the bodies authorized to make decisions, such as the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Justice, for retaliatory actions.
Evading liability by foreign agents
Vasilii Piskarev informed that at the meeting the Commission reviewed the activity of the media project of Radio Liberty “North.Realities”, which is included in the list of foreign agents.
“The resource has violated a huge number of Russian laws in two months,” the parliamentarian noted. According to Vasilii Piskarev, they even agitated on the so-called ‘day of silence’ and were engaged in the justification of extremism. “We were outraged that the publications on promoting the legalization of drugs began to appear on this resource,” said the Chairman of the Commission. “We have accumulated all this, we will ask for a response,” he said.
“We have a gap in the legislation. Foreign agents, so as not to mark their products, […] create a certain legal entity that perform the same activities as foreign agents, but already without marking. “North.Realities” is just such a company,” said Vasilii Piskarev.
“I and my colleague Mr. Klimov introduced an amendment to the law on mass media and information technologies so that such legal entities created by foreign agents will be also included in the list,” he recalled and noted that this is a common practice in foreign legislation.
The Commission plans to devote special attention to the North Caucasus in this matter.
Concrete decisions
”The Commission is already doing specific work, for example, on the preparation of bills. We have now reached the point where large information companies
operating in the territory of the Russian Federation feel a very serious
responsibility. They can get it only through administrative fines, the material
side,“ said Adalbi Shkhagoshev
Adalby Lyulevich
, a member of the Committee on Security and Corruption
Control.
He recalled that earlier a law was adopted, and according to which it is possible to fine foreign media that violate the legislation of the Russian Federation, but the amounts of fines are very small.
”Now we have prepared a draft, which will be considered by the Commission, that they [violators] will pay either 2.5 to 3.5 million rubles, or 4% of the total turnover [in the country],“ Adalbi Shkhagoshev said. He believes that such fines will be effective enough to prevent violations of the law.
At the same time, Vasilii Piskarev stressed that no one restricts the media-foreign agents in collecting information and limit their work. The main thing is that they should not violate the legislation of our country.
