Russian MPs vote to hide details of their tax returns from public view

Russia’s lower house of parliament has voted in favour of a bill that will lift the requirement for lawmakers to make public their annual income and assets reports, in a move that will significantly decrease transparency.

According to a statement on the website of the State Duma, after 1 March, publicly available information about Russian lawmakers’ income declarations will not allow for identification of them.

Lawmakers will still be obliged to submit their declarations to the tax authorities every year and a “summary” will be released based on this information.

“This is about the protection of personal data,” one lawmaker, Pavel Krasheninnikov, was quoted as saying on the Duma website.

The bill was approved on its third and final readings on Wednesday. It must still be approved by the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house, and signed into law by the president, Vladimir Putin – usually a formality.

“De facto, we are returning to the Soviet model of fighting corruption, which should only involve law enforcement,” the political scientist Alexei Makarkin told the Kommersant newspaper on Monday.

In December, Putin issued a decree waiving the requirement for officials to declare income and assets for the duration of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.

Transparency International ranked Russia 136 out of 180 in its corruption perceptions index for 2021.

The vote came on the same day that a Moscow court ordered the closure of Russia’s oldest human rights organisation, the Moscow Helsinki Group, silencing another respected institution.

The judge with the Moscow city court granted a justice ministry request to “dissolve” the rights group, the court announced in a statement. The Moscow Helsinki Group said it would appeal against the decision. It is the latest in a series of legal rulings against organisations critical of the Kremlin, a trend that intensified after Putin sent troops into Ukraine last year.

The Moscow Helsinki Group was created in 1976 when Russia was part of the Soviet Union and had been considered Russia’s oldest rights group. For decades, it was headed by Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who became a symbol of resistance in Russia and who died in 2018.

When Alexeyeva – the doyenne of Russia’s rights movement – celebrated her 90th birthday, Putin visited her at home, bringing her flowers. “I am grateful to you for everything that you have done for a huge number of people in our country for many, many years,” Putin told her at the time.

The justice ministry had accused the rights group of breaching its legal status by carrying out activities such as observing trials outside the Moscow region.

Before Putin sent troops Ukraine, Russia dissolved another pillar of the country’s rights movement, Memorial. That group emerged as a symbol of hope during Russia’s chaotic transition to democracy in the early 1990s and was co-awarded the Nobel peace prize less than a year after it was ordered to shut down.

The Russian government has been using an array of laws to stifle critics, for example imposing prison terms of up to 15 years for spreading “false information” about the military.

Most top opposition figures are either in prison or exiled.