Human rights lawyers obtain a secret Russian registry of more than 3,000 suspected extremists. The hidden database targets prominent journalists and musicians.
The human rights group Department One has obtained access to a confidential registry maintained by Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring. It lists people Russian authorities suspect of involvement in terrorism, extremism, or sabotage, or of financing those activities.
Human rights lawyers have discovered a secret Russian registry managed by Rosfinmonitoring, the country's financial monitoring agency. The hidden database lists over 3,000 individuals suspected by Russian authorities of ties to terrorism, extremism, or sabotage. Unlike the public list of extremists and terrorists, this confidential registry remains unpublished.
Rosfinmonitoring's Interagency Commission on Combating the Financing of Terrorism decides which individuals to include in the registry through a decision made by the agency. Financial institutions receive the registry lists, and people on the secret list face similar restrictions as those on the public list, such as account freezes.
The "secret registry" includes prominent journalists and musicians like Leonid Parfenov, Andrey Loshak, Boris Grebenshchikov, and Vera Musayelyan. The dataset was published by Department One, a human rights group, and can be searched by name. Lawyer Evgeny Smirnov warned that inclusion in the registry could indicate Russian law enforcement or security agencies are monitoring a person, potentially leading to a criminal investigation.
Notably, Russia has continued to maintain the registry even after the death of some individuals, such as Alexey Navalny.
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