Penza, 29 December 2016. PenzaNews. The regional court left unchanged the decision of the Leninsky area court of Penza, which denied the right of “Valentin Manuylov” publishing house to challenge the order stated in the inspection act of the Ministry of Justice of 12 April 2016, which allowed including the independent non-commercial organization in the list of foreign agents.

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As it was reported by the newspaper “Ulitsa Moskovskaya”, the session of the board of appeals, which took place on Thursday, December 29, lasted 31 minutes.

The procedural appeal of the publishing house was considered by the judges Larisa Smirnova, Pavel Popov, and Elena Repina.

At the beginning of the session, the director of the publishing house, the editor in chief of the newspaper “Ulitsa Moskovskaya” Valentin Manuylov expressed his opinion about the case.

He reminded that the mass medium received the support from the foundation “Sreda” in April 2015 – before it was recognized as a foreign agent.

“I think it is absolutely unfair to cancel the law. That is why we challenged the inspection act, the Penza judges had a chance to cancel this act and to restore the justice. They still did not do this. The examination of our and other cases lets me draw the conclusion that the law enforcement practice regarding the law on non-commercial organizations has political colouring,” the editor in chief of “Ulitsa Moskovskaya” noted.

Valentin Manuylov assumed that in several years the law on foreign agents will be cancelled and those non-commercial organizations that suffered from this law will accept apologies and will be probably paid a compensation.

In turn, the representative of the regional department of the Ministry of Justice Olga Medvedeva expressed the opinion that the court of the first instance made a legal and well-grounded decision.

“During the inspection it was found out that the organization takes part in political activity by  publishing the newspaper “Ulitsa Moskovskaya”. We think that the articles and interviews that we dealt with in our act are aimed at public resonance and drawing attention of the civil society,” she said.

As the result, the decision of the Leninsky area court of Penza was left without changes and the complaint was not satisfied.

The publishing house “Valentin Manuylov” plans to lodge an appeal. The organization has 6 months to do this.