The Federal Service for Financial Monitoring of Russia included the Sevastopol resident Igor Movenko, who is accused of extremism for commenting on the social network Vkontakte, in the so-called list of extremists and terrorists.
Spouse of Igor Movenko said that her husband already had difficulties with cashing money. “Igor went to online banking, all his accounts are blocked. This means blocking any non-cash accounts and transactions. For example, to withdraw the salary is already a problem,” explained Valentina Movenko to the correspondent of the Crimean newspaper.
The list of Rosfinmonitoring includes persons that were sentenced by the Russian court for recognizing guilty in terrorist and extremist articles of the Russian Criminal Code or under Art. 15.27.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation “Providing financial support to terrorism”. However, in addition to the verdict, there are other grounds to be included in such a list: a procedural decision to recognize a person as a suspect or an investigator’s decision to accuse the person according to a terrorist or extremist article, as in the case of Igor Movenko.
“Thus, the presumption of innocence is violated, since even within the Russian legal system, the guilt of a person is not proven, but it is already listed as an extremist or terrorist on the Rosfinmonitoring website, and his rights are already limited. And in the case of Crimea, many Ukrainian citizens are persecuted for extremist and terrorist articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation illegally, for political reasons, “- explains the head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, Olga Skrypnyk.
The list of Rosfinmonitoring relates only to financial and property restrictions with respect to people listed on the list. Financial, banking, credit organizations with respect to such people have the right to suspend the use of their accounts, to reject monetary transactions, to refuse to serve the client. People included in the list can only carry out operations to receive and spend wages in the amount of not more than 10,000 rubles per month per each member of the family. They can spend pensions, scholarships, allowances, social payments, and from this money they can pay fines or mandatory payments. All actions of people included in the list, concerning money or property, are under constant control of the relevant bodies and services. In addition, information on people from the list of Rosfinmonitoring is brought to lawyers, notaries and persons engaged in entrepreneurial activities in the field of legal or accounting services.
“Therefore, it is extremely difficult for people from this list to obtain the above services, because people don’t want to work with clients who are labeled as” extremists or terrorists,” – explains Skrypnyk.
The human rights activist notes that some of financial restrictions are reasonable if it is a question of real terrorists or terrorist organizations that receive money for the organization of terrorist attacks. However, practice in Crimea is quite different, many people (Nikolai Semena, Anna Andriievskaia, Suleiman Kadyrov, Andrei Klimenko and others) included in the list of Rosfinmonitoring have nothing to do with criminal activity, they just expressed their opinion.
Igor Movenko was included in such a list of “extremists and terrorists” because of his comments in the social network. The acts that are incriminated to him are not related to terrorism. But despite this, similar financial restrictions apply to him, as well as to individuals involved in the financing of terrorism and terrorist activities.
“As a result, those who remain in Crimea, in addition to being criminally prosecuted for fabricated cases, still need to somehow survive in conditions of ubiquitous restrictions,” – the head of the Crimean human rights group summed up.
