By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow: Russian non-governmental organisations Thursday called on the government authorities to disclose the names of NGOs that received $1 billion in foreign funding mentioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.
In an interview to Germany’s ARD broadcaster ahead of his visit to Germany, Putin said that in the past four months, more than 650 Russian non-governmental organisations received a total of over 28 billion rubles (almost $1 billion) from abroad.
Fifty-eight non-governmental organisations signed a letter requesting the Russian authorities to “publish without delay the full list of the 654 non-governmental organisations that had been mentioned [by Putin] and the sums they had received”.
The letter, published by a prominent Russian NGO, Memorial, states that the figure of $1 billion is “dozens of times higher” than their estimates.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin administration has not yet received the request.
A series of nationwide NGO inspections have taken place in Russia since March.
On Tuesday, election monitoring non-governmental organization Golos (Voice) became the first NGO to face administrative punishment under the recently introduced law on “foreign agents”.