Russia’s government will facilitate accounting for religious organizations that, similar to other NGOs, annually report in detail about their activities, financial receipts and spending.
Photo: Alexey Kudenko
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The Heaven Accounting
Russia’s government has elaborated procedures to facilitate accounting for religious organizations that, along with other NGOs, annually report in detail about their activities, financial receipts and spending. The authorities have softened regulations only for some chosen NGOs, the right advocates say.
The highlight of the recent meeting of government’s commission on religious associations was easing accounting procedures for the latter. The commission is headed by First Vice Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
Passed in late 2005, the amendments to the Act on NGOs materially toughened state requirements to the non-government organizations. The crackdown extended to religious associations along with the organizations opposing the government. All NGOs were obliged to provide to the Federal Registration Service annual and detailed reports about carried out actions and projects (with number of participants duly stipulated), their financial receipts and spending.
Leaders of traditional confessions called on President Vladimir Putin past December urging him to soften requirements for religious organizations. On February 2, 2007, Russia’s Orthodox Church and a few other confessions met Vladislav Surkov, deputy chief of the Kremlin’s administration. The achievement of the meeting was Surkov’s order to ease religious accounting as much as possible.
So, the confessions will be relieved of detailed reporting. They won’t have to specify to authorities how many believers attended the service and what the topic of eparchial meeting actually was. They won't have to give the name of individual believer donated to the Church and the sum of donation.
Nevertheless, the confessions will still report about principal activities executed in the accounting period, sources of property (receipts from foreign and Russia’s entities), spending, “including derived from international and foreign institutions, aliens and persons with no citizenship” and about “using other property.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 09, 2007
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