The State Duma refused to tighten the legislation and prohibit citizens who have ever been convicted of serious crimes from becoming senators. The remaining “loophole” allows such citizens to receive a mandate as a member of the Federation Council if their criminal record is expunged.
A ban on becoming senators for those with a criminal record for serious crimes was proposed by a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction Alexey Kurinny, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Persons who were convicted in the past, for example, of rape, pedophilia, or murder, may, after 25 years, fully represent the interests of a region in the Federation Council. This reaction is very incomprehensible, it is not clear why this assumption is made. Who are they trying to send to the Federation Council?
If another gangster “raspberry” is formed there, so that people from the 90s who have just served time, whose sentences have expired, will come there, I will remind you that for especially serious ones, 15 years is enough after the criminal record has been removed or expunged. For the hard 10 years and for the rest it’s the same.
It’s not clear why this is being done, and what does this have to do with an impeccable reputation, and who do we ultimately want to get in our Senate?” - said Kurinny.
The head of the Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, proposed rejecting Kurinny’s amendment:
“We have a ban, article two, part three - a citizen of the Russian Federation who has been sentenced to imprisonment for committing a serious or especially serious crime and who has an unexpunged or outstanding criminal record on the day of the decision to call elections cannot claim to exercise the powers of a senator. Do we think this is enough? - said United Russia.