Archive · 2021 · From the print edition of Wednesday 14 April 2021, Vol. 29, No. 8,793
NewsMinistry audits Legal Defense Guild
Inspectors from the Ministry of Internal Security are examining the foreign grants of the Talas legal aid group, which calls the audit harassment.
TALAS — Inspectors from the Ministry of Internal Security began an audit this week of the foreign grants received by the Legal Defense Guild, the Talas group that gives free legal representation to detained journalists, students and others, the guild said yesterday.
According to the guild, the inspectors have asked for its grant agreements, bank statements and correspondence with donors for the past five years. The guild was founded in 2009 by the lawyer Gulnara Sadykova, and its reports on pre-trial detention have been cited by the human rights unit of the United Nations Mission in Irad and by Human Rights Watch.
"Our accounts are in order and we will show them," Ms. Sadykova told the Herald. "But an inspection that arrives in the same month as our latest report on detention is not routine. It is harassment, and it is meant to make our donors nervous." She said the guild would cooperate with the financial review but would not hand over confidential client files.
A ministry spokesman said the audit was a routine inspection of the kind carried out on organizations that receive money from abroad, and that it had nothing to do with the guild's legal work. He did not say when it would be completed.