Russia can have much less NCOs

April 15 was the deadline for submitting operation reports by all the non-commercial organizations (NCOs), with no exceptions. Human rights activist believe that Russia can launch mass closing of NCOs.

During the recent years the number of NCOs has more than halved: from 600,000 in 2002 down to 278,000 in 2007. The trend has touched on all the regions of Northern Caucasus.

Thus, in Ingushetia in 2007, the "Rosregistratsiya" (Federal Registration Service) demanded to liquidate every fourth NCO. In Kalmykia, every eighth NCO is under threat of liquidation, and in the Astrakhan Region - every tenth one, the "Novye Izvestiya" newspaper writes.

Reports are the most problematic issue for NCOs. The submitted reports shall contain the information about the composition on managerial bodies, volume and items of spending funds, use of other property, including those received from international and foreign organizations and citizens. If an NCO fails twice to present its report, it is under threat of deleting from the registry.

According to Svetlana Chuvilova, deputy leader of the Movement "For Human Rights", filing the reports is not as problem, but it takes a lot of time. She was busy doing it for about three weeks, and had to distract from her main job.

In her turn, Svetlana Gannushkina, chair of the "Civil assistance" Committee, marks that many organizations have difficulties in filing in the documentation because for this purpose they need a good lawyer, which is not always the case with public organizations.