Justice Minister Decrees Financial Reporting Department to Implement the Agents’ Law
On July 29, Justice Minister Rati Bregadze published a decree creating a special Department for Financial Reporting under the National Agency for Public Registry to implement the controversial law on Foreign Agents passed in in May. During his briefing on July 30, the Minister also noted that CSOs can voluntarily register as of August 1. Hundreds of CSOs stated earlier that they won’t undergo voluntary registration.
The Decree
The decree, effective immediately, creates the Department for Financial Reporting on August 1, consisting of two structural units: the Registration Service and the Declaration Monitoring Service. The head of the Department will become the “authorized person” in the sense of the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence and be authorized to order verifications, “forced registration” and to impose fines.
The Decree also adds Article 273 to the law on the National Agency for Public Registry, which defines the Financial Reporting Department’s aims: “The tasks of the Department are to keep the register of organizations, which represent the interests of foreign powers, to ensure their publicity, as well as to assist the person authorized by the Ministry in his/her activities provided for by the Law of Georgia On Transparency of Foreign Influence.”
Among the main functions of the Department are:
- Keeping the register of organizations carrying out the interests of a foreign power and ensuring its public availability;
- Assistance to the person authorized by the Ministry in the activities provided for by the Law of Georgia “On Transparency of Foreign Influence”;
- Preparation of the activity report with the established periodicity and submission to the authorized persons.
Justice Minister’s Briefing
Minister Rati Bregadze stated that CSOs could register as organizations representing foreign interests as of August 1. If they fail to do so, as many NGOs in Georgia have promised to do, they will have to pay a fine of GEL 25,000 (about USD 9,200) and will be subject to “forced registration.” However, despite journalists’ questions about how this forced registration will take place, the Minister didn’t clarify the term, saying that the public “will see.”
TV Formula’s journalist present at the briefing asked whether the authorities plan to forcefully enter the offices of CSOs, to which the Minister answered: “… [you] want to mislead the public, that some masked people will enter [the offices]… There are no such events [planned]. Gone are the days when masked people entered TV stations and harassed people live on air. [Bregadze possibly referred to the TV Imedi taken off the air in 2007, during the UNM administration.] All that is in the past. It will not happen again because in the elections, the founder of your television [Davit Kezerashvili] will not be given the opportunity to come to power. … As for the procedures, those who comply with the requirements of the law will only have to submit information about who they received certain funds from and what they spent them on. Nobody asks for more. This is the truth.”
Government Mobilization
The Speaker of the Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, also addressed the issue during his briefing today. Papuashvili stated: “We are receiving information that, on the one hand, [donors] are telling [CSOs] that the organizations that will register won’t receive grants. On the other hand, there are consultations on how to circumvent this law and what ways and machinations to find so that they do not register and at the same time receive grants. Among them, there are consultations and advice on registering abroad, which is ridiculous and beyond the bounds of seriousness”.
He noted that this idea of registering abroad makes the situation worse, as they [organizations] “directly turn into a foreign actor.” He added: “The Ministry of Justice has created the relevant department, and now it is the turn of CSOs and media organizations to register. Ultimately, the result of the registration will be that the citizens of Georgia will have the opportunity to have a website where they can find out about any organization financed from abroad, by whom it is financed, and what [the money] is spent on. If foreign countries want to help us and our people, we welcome it and thank everyone. Let them do this good publicly and tell the people what the money is spent on. That is why I urge everyone to register.”
Meanwhile, in what appears to be a concerted government effort to prepare the ground for the implementation phase of the law, the ruling GD earlier dedicated a special briefing to a study it had conducted that it claimed revealed shortcomings in the transparency of civil society organizations in terms of publishing online information related to their funding from foreign sources.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
