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Elections Authorities Audit Parties
Russian election authorities revealed financial data on political parties in the fourth quarter of 2005 on Friday to closely examine them by late March. The parties bankrolled by NGOs will be under special scrutiny, said Oleg Velyashev, the deputy head of the Central Election Commission, and called NGOs the organizations that “lack transparency and are difficult to inspect”. Experts think that this statement may mean the Kremlin’s determination to ban Russian nonprofits to finance parties.
New amendments to the law On Political Parties have enabled the Central Election Commission to check parties’ quarterly financial accounting. Parties are to present their annual accountings in April so the information disclosed does not give the full picture, said Mr. Velyashev.
Having obtained the accountings, the election commission will check the information. Special attention will be paid to violations involving donations of NGOs and other nonprofit organizations. Such parties as United Russia, Patriots of Russia, the Union of Right Forces and Democratic Parties were financed by those “murky organizations”, the Election Commission claimed. Audits may be held with the help of the Federal Security Service and other agencies, Mr. Velyashev noted. The election watchdog wants to make sure that parties were not financed from abroad, which is prohibited.
The parties in question refute the reports. Andrey Vorobyev, the head of the executive committee at United Russia and founder of a nonprofit supporting the party, retorted that the party is transparent and is funded by Russian money only. Andrey Bogdanov, the leader of the Democratic Party, also disagrees with the election authorities. “I can pledge that we have not been financed by any foundations, so I can’t understand what the claims of the Central Election Commission are about.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 13, 2006
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