The Central Elections Commission intends to investigate nonprofit organizations that donated money to United Russia, the Union of Right Forces and other parties to make sure that their funds did not come from foreign donors.
The commission, which recently received the power to check parties' finances, may ask the Federal Security Service, or FSB, for assistance, Oleg Velyashev, the commission's first deputy head, said Monday.
"We need to make use of all the necessary measures to establish the truth," he said, Interfax reported.
Velyashev complained to Kommersant, in remarks published Monday, that the NGOs had opaque structures that made them difficult to check.
Four parties received most of their funding from NGOs in the last three months of 2005: the pro-Kremlin United Russia; the liberal Union of Right Forces, or SPS; the liberal Democratic Party; and the leftist Patriots of Russia, Velyashev told the newspaper.
An elections commission spokesman confirmed the report. He said he could not identify the NGOs being targeted until the investigation ended, which was expected to be sometime in March.
United Russia received the most donations, totaling 268.5 million rubles ($9.6 million), while the nationalist Rodina party trailed with 31 million rubles and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party came in third with 24.7 million rubles, Velyashev said.
SPS and the liberal Yabloko party each collected about 10 million rubles, while the Communists reported only 4 million rubles.
United Russia spokesman Andrei Anasyan declined comment Monday, but Kommersant quoted the head of the party's executive committee as saying that a main sponsor was the Fund for the Support of United Russia. He said donations did not come from abroad.
SPS spokesman Denis Terekhov confirmed that most of the party's budget in the last quarter of 2005 had come from NGOs, but he declined to identify them.
SPS's annual financial report for 2004, posted on the web site of the Justice Ministry's Federal Registration Service, listed eight NGOs as donors, including the Institute for the Economy in Transition, headed by former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, an architect of post-Soviet reforms and a co-founder of SPS.
Calls to the institute went unanswered Monday afternoon.
The other NGOs, including the Fund for Public Programs and the Fund for Democratic Initiatives, could not be located for comment.
The Federal Registration Service handed over its power to conduct financial checks to the elections commission under amendments to the law on political parties that came into force last year.
The leader of the Democratic Party, Andrei Bogdanov, denied on Monday that the party had taken money from NGOs, saying the elections commission had apparently made a mistake.
Officials with the Patriots of Russia could not be reached for comment.
The looming investigations are more likely linked to authorities' growing suspicion about NGOs than the change in which agencies oversees party finances, said Yury Dzhibladze, head of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.
President Vladimir Putin said last summer that Russia would not tolerate foreign financing for political activities in Russia. In January, he signed a law that will put NGOs' budgets under close state scrutiny starting in April.
Also in January, the FSB said it had uncovered British spies working under the guise of diplomats and that one of them had authorized grants for Russian NGOs.
Dzhibladze scoffed at the notion that foreign money was financing parties, calling it "a far-fetched problem."
Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, agreed, saying that foreign money goes for educational workshops for party members and other projects that only indirectly influenced politics, at best.
He said NGOs could be used to channel money from abroad but that the donors would most likely be self-exiled Russian businessmen, not foreign governments.
Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky and Leonid Nevzlin are among the wealthy businessmen who have fled the country in recent years after facing criminal charges that they called politically inspired.
The main purpose of NGOs is to provide anonymity to parties' donors, Makarkin said.
He speculated that United Russia, for instance, might prefer to use NGOs to conceal that it is a party of big business and bureaucrats from rank-and-file voters.
For opposition parties, NGOs are convenient for donors who do not want to take political risks, he said.
Russia has 37 registered parties, but three of them failed to file financial reports for the fourth quarter and officials were unable to find and contact them, elections commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said Saturday on Mayak radio.
Of the remaining 34, seven reported no donations at all.
Elections officials have processed only the reports from parties' headquarters and have yet to analyze reports from their regional branches, which have separate budgets, Velyashev said.
The parties must submit financial reports for all of 2005 by April 1, he said.
The commission, which recently received the power to check parties' finances, may ask the Federal Security Service, or FSB, for assistance, Oleg Velyashev, the commission's first deputy head, said Monday.
"We need to make use of all the necessary measures to establish the truth," he said, Interfax reported.
Velyashev complained to Kommersant, in remarks published Monday, that the NGOs had opaque structures that made them difficult to check.
Four parties received most of their funding from NGOs in the last three months of 2005: the pro-Kremlin United Russia; the liberal Union of Right Forces, or SPS; the liberal Democratic Party; and the leftist Patriots of Russia, Velyashev told the newspaper.
An elections commission spokesman confirmed the report. He said he could not identify the NGOs being targeted until the investigation ended, which was expected to be sometime in March.
United Russia received the most donations, totaling 268.5 million rubles ($9.6 million), while the nationalist Rodina party trailed with 31 million rubles and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party came in third with 24.7 million rubles, Velyashev said.
SPS and the liberal Yabloko party each collected about 10 million rubles, while the Communists reported only 4 million rubles.
United Russia spokesman Andrei Anasyan declined comment Monday, but Kommersant quoted the head of the party's executive committee as saying that a main sponsor was the Fund for the Support of United Russia. He said donations did not come from abroad.
SPS spokesman Denis Terekhov confirmed that most of the party's budget in the last quarter of 2005 had come from NGOs, but he declined to identify them.
SPS's annual financial report for 2004, posted on the web site of the Justice Ministry's Federal Registration Service, listed eight NGOs as donors, including the Institute for the Economy in Transition, headed by former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, an architect of post-Soviet reforms and a co-founder of SPS.
Calls to the institute went unanswered Monday afternoon.
The other NGOs, including the Fund for Public Programs and the Fund for Democratic Initiatives, could not be located for comment.
The Federal Registration Service handed over its power to conduct financial checks to the elections commission under amendments to the law on political parties that came into force last year.
The leader of the Democratic Party, Andrei Bogdanov, denied on Monday that the party had taken money from NGOs, saying the elections commission had apparently made a mistake.
Officials with the Patriots of Russia could not be reached for comment.
The looming investigations are more likely linked to authorities' growing suspicion about NGOs than the change in which agencies oversees party finances, said Yury Dzhibladze, head of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights.
President Vladimir Putin said last summer that Russia would not tolerate foreign financing for political activities in Russia. In January, he signed a law that will put NGOs' budgets under close state scrutiny starting in April.
Also in January, the FSB said it had uncovered British spies working under the guise of diplomats and that one of them had authorized grants for Russian NGOs.
Dzhibladze scoffed at the notion that foreign money was financing parties, calling it "a far-fetched problem."
Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, agreed, saying that foreign money goes for educational workshops for party members and other projects that only indirectly influenced politics, at best.
He said NGOs could be used to channel money from abroad but that the donors would most likely be self-exiled Russian businessmen, not foreign governments.
Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky and Leonid Nevzlin are among the wealthy businessmen who have fled the country in recent years after facing criminal charges that they called politically inspired.
The main purpose of NGOs is to provide anonymity to parties' donors, Makarkin said.
He speculated that United Russia, for instance, might prefer to use NGOs to conceal that it is a party of big business and bureaucrats from rank-and-file voters.
For opposition parties, NGOs are convenient for donors who do not want to take political risks, he said.
Russia has 37 registered parties, but three of them failed to file financial reports for the fourth quarter and officials were unable to find and contact them, elections commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said Saturday on Mayak radio.
Of the remaining 34, seven reported no donations at all.
Elections officials have processed only the reports from parties' headquarters and have yet to analyze reports from their regional branches, which have separate budgets, Velyashev said.
The parties must submit financial reports for all of 2005 by April 1, he said.