How a Law on Registering Foreign Agents Works in the US, and How Such a Law Should Work in Russia

As Kenneth Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, explained in 2007, the Foreign Agents Registration Unit (FARA) was enacted in order to “expose foreign participation in efforts to influence our laws, policy, or public opinion.” The purpose of FARA is “to protect the national defense, internal security, and foreign relations of the U.S. by requiring public disclosure by persons engaged in certain political and quasi-political activities on behalf of foreign principals.”

Reading the law, one is struck by the extraordinary lengthy and comprehensive – “catch-all” as Americans would say – wording that dictates a desire to block any possibility of evading the law. The definition of “foreign principal” includes not only foreign government officials and political figures, but also “a partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.” The term “agent of a foreign principal” is “any person who … acts in any [other] capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal,… directly or through another person.” And also, “any person who agrees, consents, assumes or purports to act as, or who is or holds himself out to be, whether or not pursuant to a contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign principal.”

[It continues:] “The term ‘political activities’ means any activity that the person engaging in it believes will, or that the person intends to, in any way influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States or any section of the public within the United States with reference to formulating, adopting or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States, or with reference to the political or public interests…”

Take notice: the definition of foreign agent includes not just his “actions,” but also plans, intentions and agreements to act, and even allowing the foreign principal to use him as his agent. And even direct contact with a foreign principal isn’t necessary – interaction may take place indirectly, through a third party. And the agent should talk about to what extent he (or the third party) has been “supervised, directed, owned, controlled, financed, or subsidized” by any foreign agent (§ 612 (а) 7).

How the law controls financial flows is especially strict. It goes without saying that the agent should account for all of funds received, including valuable objects, and must describe these expenditures in detail: to whom, for what, how many, when, in what manner. But it is also necessary to account for “money and other things of value spent or disposed of by the registrant during the preceding 60 days in furtherance of or in connection with activities which require his registration hereunder and which have been undertaken by him either as an agent of a foreign principal or for himself or any other person” (§ 612 (а) 8). The Justice Department’s National Security Division wants to know how you became an agent.

There is a separate, interesting remark: “In any proceeding under this subchapter in which it is charged that a person is an agent of a foreign principal with respect to a foreign principal outside of the United States, proof of the specific identity of the foreign principal shall be permissible but not necessary” (§ 618 (b)). This means that when determining who is a foreign agent becomes tough – when, for example, he has listed funds through an offshore zone and it’s impossible to find the source – the determination becomes unnecessary. It would suffice that there are non-American funds and, accordingly, non-American influence.

To register, an agent must provide “copies of each written agreement and the terms and conditions of each oral agreement, including all modifications of such agreements, or, where no contract exists, a full statement of all the circumstances, by reason of which the registrant is performing or assuming or purporting or as agreed to perform for himself or for a foreign principal or for any person other than a foreign principal any activities which require his registration.” All information is given under oath.

Enacting a similar law, adapted to Russia’s problems, will be the first step to limiting foreign influence in Russia, precisely with the purpose of building democracy like a Russian people’s government in their own country.