Georgia’s new foreign agent draft law includes criminal penalties for non-compliance

According to a new draft law on foreign agents published on the Georgian Parliament’s website — which,  according to the ruling Georgian Dream party, is an exact translation of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) — failure to comply with the law can be punishable by up to five years of imprisonment, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

In addition, ‘any foreigner who is convicted of violating any provision of this law or is found attempting to breach the regulations established by it will be subject to deportation’, the bill read.

According to the explanatory note attached to the new draft law, the reason for adopting a ‘precise analogue’ of FARA is that the majority of civil society organisations receiving foreign funding refused to register themselves under the currently existing, controversial foreign agents law.

Previously, Parliamentary Speaker Mamuka Mdinaradze said on 5 February that such legislation was needed because ‘several dozens of the wealthiest’ organisations had not registered as foreign agents.

The current legislation labels any civil society or media organisation that receives at least 20% of its funding from abroad ‘organisations carrying out the interests of a foreign power’. Such organisations must register as foreign agents in a special registry and are subject to monitoring every six months, which lawyers have warned could include forcing them to hand over internal communications and confidential sources.

Organisations that do not comply are only subject to large fines, though as far as OC Media is aware, no organisations have faced any penalties for non-compliance.

What is FARA?

Under FARA, a foreign agent is defined as any person (legal or physical) who is under the control of, or acts at the direction of, a foreign power and acts in the interests of that foreign power.

In addition, under FARA, media organisations, even if foreign funded and foreign owned, are not labeled as foreign agents as long as their policies are not actively directed by a foreign power.

FARA was originally enacted in 1938, in the lead-up to World War II, when the US was facing sustained threats of foreign influence from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which were both considered to be hostile powers.

As a result, the legislation was targeted at individuals and countries considered to be foes of the US.

However, until President Donald Trump’s first term in 2017, it was rarely employed beyond being used to force foreign lobbyists to register. Indeed, between 1988 and 2018, the US Department of Justice only brought 10 criminal FARA cases against 11 organisations and individuals.

The ‘translation of FARA’ is just one of the bills which  the ruling Georgian Dream party have announced in recent weeks. The list also includes a media law that would restrict media funding from foreign sources and ‘establish standards for media objectivity and journalistic ethics’, as well as ‘define institutional mechanisms for monitoring and safeguarding these standards’.

Alongside the registration of the ‘FARA translation’ in the parliament, the ruling party has already adopted legislative amendments to create the State Grant Management Agency, which will be responsible for issuing public grants to civil society organizations. However, grants will only be awarded to organizations whose activities, in the view of Georgian Dream, ‘will be in line with the priority areas of the country’s development’.

Georgian Dream introduces word-for-word ‘translation’ of US FARA legislation, previously called ‘a total disaster’ by PM Kobakhidze

Georgian Dream announced its intention to replace the existing foreign agent law with a direct translation of US legislation.

OC MediaMikheil Gvadzabia