They want to draw up a report against someone for retelling Proekt’s investigation into nepotism in the government.

Journalist Alexei Seregin from Mari El has been summoned to the Ministry of Justice to have a report drawn up against him under the article on participation in the activities of an “undesirable organisation.”

The authorities intend to draw up the report because of a post retelling a recent investigation by Proekt called “Fathers and Sons” about nepotism in Russian government. The outlet was declared an “undesirable organisation” back in 2021. In his post, Seregin merely reported that Proekt had published an investigation and summarised what he considered to be the three most important facts from the material. Until now, there have been no known cases of people being accused of participating in an “undesirable organisation” simply for retelling its materials.

“There is no statutory definition of ‘participation,’ so law enforcement interpret it however they wish. Overall, the difficulty with the law on ‘undesirable organisations’ is precisely that there’s no legal definition of ‘participation,’ and you have to piece it together bit by bit from case law,” commented OVD-Info’s collaborating lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina.

She reminded readers of the case against Igor Kalyapin, founder of the Committee Against Torture, under the same article. In 2021, he was fined over references in CAT’s publications from 2015–2017 to the Czech organisation People in Need, which was designated as “undesirable” in 2019.