Moscow prosecutors suspends left front activities for 3 months

The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office on Friday suspended the activities of the Left Front movement led by Sergei Udaltsov for three months for law breaches. Moscow prosecutors said that on November 22 last year, they notified the Left Front movement of violations of the law “On Public Associations” and the need to remove them after a probe into the movement’s activities. Specifically, the talk was about the organizational principles which the Left Front’s constituent congress adopted in October 2008. The prosecutors claim that these principles do not meet the requirements set by law. “These organizational principles do not specify the movement’s goal and do not indicate the boundaries of the Left Front’s activities. The organization does not have a procedure of forming a supervisory body or a congress; there’s no information about sources of income or other property,” the prosecutors explained. Besides, "the law states that only a public organization which has a status of legal entity can possess funds and other property. However, requests for material aid to the organization and persons who have been taken in custody as well as Yandex account numbers regularly appear on the Left Front’s official website. Since October 2008 the Left Front has not been compiling or publishing annual reports on property use. Prosecutors emphasized that under the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation”, the Left Front ought to have immediately considered the prosecutor’s notification of violation and taken concrete steps to remove the breaches before January 28, 2013. "The prosecutors had not received by the aforesaid date any written reply from the Left Front that the notification of violation had been considered. The audit showed that the Left Front public organization had not removed the law violations,” the Moscow prosecutors explained. "Under these circumstances, the city prosecutors made use of the right granted by Article 42 of the federal law “On Public Associations” to suspend the public organization’s activities for a period of six months if all violations are not removed on time. “The activities of the Left Front public organization have been suspended for three months as of today until July 19,” the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office said. The Left Front Council has received a notification of violation. “The Left Front uses a five-cornered star with the organization’s name on it as its symbol on the Internet site and during mass public actions. However, the star has not been officially registered as the movement’s symbol in a manner prescribed by the law,” the prosecutors said.