http://en.gazeta.ru/news/2011/12/02/a_3855802.shtml

Election watchdog fined $1000, resumes work

2.12.11 20:51

Grigory Melkonyants, deputy executive director of Golos association   Photo: Kirill Lebedev

The Magistrate’s court of Moscow Meschyansky district found the Golos association – a watchdog monitoring election violations – guilty of infringement of media participation in election coverage. The organization was fined 30,000 rubles ($1000), the Violations map (kartanarusheniy.ru), the cause of the organization’s prosecution, will resume work.

On Friday evening, Judge Svetlana Kalantyr found Golos guilty of election coverage infringement under part one of article 5.5 of the Administrative Code. Te maximum fine for this violation is 100,000 rubles ($3300). She refused all petitions by the Golos lawyers, including a petition not to discuss the case in court but to return it to the prosecution office.

Ramil Ahmetgaliev, a lawyer for Golos, tried to point out that prosecution was interested in articles on the organization’s website: Golos.org, but the court case dealt with a different site, that of Golos’s Violations Map (kartanarusheniy.ru). He also pointed out that Golos.org is not registered as mass media (i.e. newspaper) and cannot subject to this law.

Golos is going to appeal and will resume work on the Violations Map, although they expect even more pressure.

Golos is an independent watchdog that has been monitoring elections in Russia for 10 years. This year, Golos, together with Gazeta.ru started an online map, filled in by anonymous reports of election law violations from different regions of Russia. These reports are unverified and there’s a warning in site saying so.

Earlier, the chairman of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, sent a letter to the Prosecution office asking to investigate Golos.

“They mostly report negative information about just one party – United Russia. This is may form a negative image of this party among the voters,” the letter said.

Churov had also complained about international observers, who reported a suspicious similarity between United Russia’s party posters and government sponsored advertisements of the elections themselves.

As of this writing, the Violations map has 4,956 reports of election law violations.