US Filed No Charges Against Russian Community Council Over FARA Concerns - Board Member

Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published November 19, 2021 | 06:00 AM

US authorities have not filed charges against the Russian Community Council in the USA (RCC) over concerns related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Council board member Anton Konev told Sputnik

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2021) US authorities have not filed charges against the Russian Community Council in the USA (RCC) over concerns related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Council board member Anton Konev told Sputnik.

The RCC announced on Thursday that it was temporarily suspending all activities due to an FBI probe into alleged FARA violations that targeted members of the Russian community in the US. FARA is a US law passed in 1938 requiring anyone representing the interests of foreign powers in a political or quasi-political capacity to disclose their relationship with the foreign government and information about related activities and finances.

"To date, no charges filed," Konev said on Thursday.

The FBI has conducted searches of the homes of the RCC chair Elena Branson and council's secretary Sergey Gladysh, Konev added.

I said "All this is a preliminary, but we decided that it is not safe to continue the work of our organization," he noted.

Konev said that FBI also interviewed him, but did not search his house.

"RCC gets no funding from the Russian government and gets no direct orders from anybody in the Russian government. It has a role of expressing the opinions of Russian compatriots in the US to Russian government, but it works only in one direction - toward the Russian government," he said.

In a statement published on their website, RCC notes that FARA has on multiple occasions been criticized for its selective enforcement and targeting of individuals and organizations for engaging with countries that are out of favor with the US government.

The RCC statement mentions that the FBI questioned several hundred members of the Russian community across the country, including students and seniors, and refers to the measure as "a form of pressure reminiscent of the Cold War era."