Banks are required to freeze funds and suspend services to persons and groups included in the list
FILE PHOTO. © OLGA MALTSEVA / AFP
Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) on Friday expanded its list of persons and organizations involved in extremist activities or terrorism to include the LGBT movement. The updated list could be found on the agency’s website.
According to the law, banks are required to freeze the funds of persons included in this list and suspend services to them.
Last November, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the Ministry of Justice’s recognition of the international LGBT movement as extremist. The court also recognized its structural divisions as extremist and banned them.
According to Interfax sources, the law “does not affect the right of citizens to privacy and will not entail any negative legal consequences.” The restrictions are related to the need to comply with the ban on LGBT propaganda, advertising, generating interest, and involvement in the LGBT movement.
In 2022, Russia expanded an existing ban on ‘LGBT propaganda’ to minors by outlawing it altogether. Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, said at the time that the ban would shield “our children and the future of the country from the darkness spread by the US and European states.”
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President Vladimir Putin clarified last month that the authorities do not have issues with what members of the community do in their personal lives, as long as they “don’t flaunt it” in public and do not involve children.
