Yesterday, the Golovino District Court in Moscow deferred till May 10 its hearing of the complaint filed by the Educated Media Foundation. The complaint alleges unlawfulness of actions taken by officers from the Economic Security Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. On April 18, the officers seized documentation and file servers from the Foundation’s predecessor, a non-governmental organization by the name of Internews. At first glance, this is just an ordinary complaint of which Russian courts of law hear millions every year. A second glance, however, reveals a clear disparity between the scale of the alleged transgression and the severity of the attachment of property measures.

Ms. Manana Aslamazyan, the head of Internews, was returning home from a trip abroad. She informed [Russian] customs officials that she had 9,500 Euros on her person. This happens to be approximately $2,800 over the $10,000 limit approved for bringing into the country without declaration. Subsequent to this, Ms. Aslamazyan was accused of carrying contraband. In contrast, her legal counselors maintain that her actions can only be qualified as a violation of Article 16.4 of the Code of Administrative Misdemeanors of the Russian Federation, i.e., “Failure to Declare or False Declaration by a Private Person of [Amounts of] Foreign Currency.” The maximum penalty under this Article is a ruble [just under US$100] fine.

The police, however, went after the legal entity [Ms. Aslamazyan represents] instead and seized in the office of Internews all file servers containing information regarding past and present competitions and training sessions held or to be held with personnel of regional TV outlets. As a result, all activities of the organization which has since 1997 prepared 15,000 highly qualified regional TV outlet personnel—reporters and cameramen, as well as managerial staff and accountants—have been suspended. Six workshops, three distance learning classes and a [Russian National] Competition [among Regional TV Outlets] entitled “Time to Act”—all previously scheduled for May and early June—have been cancelled. Effective yesterday, all employees of the Educated Media Foundation were granted vacation time till the end of the month.

Perhaps, the economic crime fighters were interested in unearthing financial irregularities that may have transpired on Ms. Aslamazyan’s watch. If this were the case, seizing just the accounting documentation should have sufficed, even though neither the Tax Inspectorate nor any prior audits conducted on an annual basis had discovered any accounting violations—ever in the ten-year life span of Internews.

It is quite possible that the police simply came up with a rather creative interpretation of the Russian President’s words regarding the need to curtail the funding of domestic non-governmental organizations with foreign money. Indeed, the Ford Foundation, the TASIS Program in Europe and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia [Foundation] have all been among grant givers of Internews. For the sake of a balanced characterization, however, the list also included the Russian Ministry for Printed Media and the Dynasty Foundation set up by the Honorary Chairman of The VimpelCom Group Mr. Dmitry Zimin.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs could have corroborated their actions in court by producing whatever documents had warranted the seizure in the context of the criminal case. However, a single prosecutor from the Office of the Prosecutor for Crime on Mass Transit was their only presence in the courtroom. This individual arrived without any materials of the case or any knowledge of the status of the ongoing investigation: the other day, Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs used its authority to take over the case file.

On the eve of this year’s World Press Freedom Day which we mark today, some foreign non-governmental organizations such as Freedom House and Reporters without Borders were given yet another piece of evidence for lowering Russia’s press freedom rating. The only hope remains with the appeal to the Russian President by [Russian] journalists—of whom, at last night’s count, there were almost 2,000— which stresses the need to preserve Internews/Educated Media as an organization and to reign in some of the overzealous security establishment officials. Hopefully, this appeal will not go unnoticed.
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¹ Translator’s note: May 1 (International Labor Day) and May 9 (Victory Day) are both holidays in Russia, many people take vacation the first 10 days of May.

² Translator’s Note: The VimpelCom Group is a mobile phone service provider in Russia

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