NGO Checks In Russia To Become More Organized And ‘Systematic’ – Minister

(RIA Novosti – St Petersburg, May 16, 2013) Inspections of non-commercial organizations in Russia will continue but they will become more balanced and systematic, Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov has said.

“Over the last year, legislation on NCOs has been seriously renewed. These inspections had not been carried out for a long time. Now, somehow too many were planned and inspected, a little more often than in the previous period. In the future, this will probably become balanced and inspections will be carried out more systematically, but to say that there will be none is absurd,” Konovalov told journalists.

According to the minister, inspections of NCOs is a procedure prescribed by Russian legislation and they are conducted not only by Justice Ministry but also by other authorized bodies including the prosecutor’s office.

“Recently, there have been too many inspections compared to the period when their number was significantly smaller. But I think this is due in part to our Russian reality, with sometimes farcical bureaucratic activity,” Konovalov said.

(Passage omitted: background)

(Earlier the same day, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax quoted Konovalov as denying that Justice Ministry was following a “political order” when conducting the recent wave of inspections of NGOs. “We in the Justice Ministry did not plan this wave. We were doing our job, within our competence. We did not carry out any political task, we had not been given any,” Konovalov said.)