Tax officers are making publicly available the list of people who are funded from foreign sources in the second half of 2023. CABAR.asia figures out why the authorities have introduced this amendment.
Legislative amendments that require tax officers to publish the said register became effective on January 1, 2023. But they will become effective in the second half of the year – information must be published “by results of six months no later than 20th day of the month following the reporting month on the web resource of the authority at: www.kgd.gov.kz”. Half-yearly reports shall be submitted no later than August 15, so the list can be probably published in September. The pubic register will contain the name of the person funded from abroad and his/her identification number.
Why publish the register?
“This amendment is generally meant to improve the level of public trust both to the state and to non-governmental organisations,” as the SRC, State Revenue Committee, which has tax service in its structure, explained the amendment.
According to the specialised accounting website, uchet.kz, monitoring of foreign funding was introduced in Kazakhstan to ensure transparency of usage of money received from abroad.
“Monitoring does not concern financial flows of entrepreneurs, their economic activity. It’s only about targeted foreign funding of non-governmental organisations (NGO) that have nothing to do with the entrepreneurial activity,” according to uchet.kz.
Gulmira Birzhanova, co-founder and lawyer of Public Foundation “Legal Media Centre”, reminded that the database of persons receiving foreign funding was created back in 2018. NGOs with foreign funding must submit special reports to the tax office. According to her, such reports were introduced to counter extremism and terrorism, but in fact this measure is ineffective.
“Creation of registers is not always very good, especially when NGOs are divided into categories and when they say that it is needed to counter extremism. But we understand that in fact extremists or terrorists would never submit reports on receiving money,” the human rights defender said.
The only purpose of reports on foreign funding, according to fact-checker and media trainer Pavel Bannikov, is to create a legal opportunity, which seems to be non-political to an outside observer, to close undesirable organisations. “The current register (its public access – Editor) makes surveillance more comfortable,” said Bannikov.
Adil Dzhalilov, director of the non-governmental organisation “MediaNet international journalism centre”, calls the decision on register publication the analogue of Russia’s practice, when NGOs, journalists and other persons are included into the official list of foreign agents funded from abroad.
“I can say even more – it is obviously the influence of Russia. Anyway, I come to this conclusion when I look at the events in Georgia,” Dzhalilov made this example implying the attempt of the Georgian parliament to adopt the law on foreign agents. President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili estimated the attempts as follows, “One of political groups decides to initiate the law, which, in its content, is closer to the wicked model of Russia, not Europe.”
Transparency for all
Pavel Bannikov reminded that the data on NGOs and their funding are publicly available without a special register – both in grantor’s report and in NGOs.
“Given that the key recipients of international grants are not the media or NGOs, but state authorities of Kazakhstan, it looks ridiculous,” Bannikov said.
Meanwhile, state institutions must not submit their reports on funding from abroad, so, state bodies will not be listed on the public register.
“If we speak about transparency (publication of the register – Editor), we should also speak about transparency of the state itself. Why does our country, for example, provide no access to the data on receipt of funds under the government order for information, and they are classified as “for official use”?” said Gulmira Birzhanova indicating the ‘non-transparent behaviour’ of state authorities.
Adil Dzhalilov also shares the opinion that state authorities should be transparent and budgetary costs should be under control.
At risk
According to Pavel Bannikov, there are no particular risks for grant recipients themselves as they are mostly transparent and act under the tax code.
“Except that our domestic vatnik and kumis patriots will now easily find a reason for a cheap hype and misleading the audience,” Bannikov said.
Gulmira Birzhanova sees the risk in possible publishing data on individuals in the public register, which would violate the law on personal data.
According to him, the fight against ‘foreign agents’ is not leading to anything reasonable but the witch hunt.
Tatiana Golubtsova, media trainer, head of the project “House of Media Literacy” of Karaganda region, reminds that the goal of NGOs has always been and will be to maintain stability and peace in the society.
“There are wrong stereotypes that the actions of NGOs allegedly launch revolutions and mass protests,” Golubtsova said. “Vice versa, it’s NGOs that can prevent such events from happening by their activity: if they notice a problem, they tell about it to state authorities, and seek the solution together. NGOs have prevented many social unrests this way in Kazakhstan.”