On October 17, 2011, a first-instance court in Arkhangelsk held closed hearings on the criminal case against Prof. Mikhail Suprun and Colonel Alexander Dudarev. The case is lasting since September 2009, and “interested persons” sometimes seem to be not able to realize and to resolve it.

Preliminary hearing for the criminal case against Mikhail N. Suprun and Alexander V. Dudarev is scheduled in the Oktyabrsky district court of the city of Arkhangelsk for September 22, 2011, 10.00. The hearing will be held in closed regime.

On July 14, 2011, lawyers will be to prove to the Novosibirsk Oblast Court that a prosecutor’s office is a government body subject to the FOI law.

On June 1, 2011, the Kalininsky district court of St.-Petersburg made a significant decision regarding archive information access: the For Administrative User Only stamp should be removed from the document providing rules for archive declassification. Strange as it have been, the approved regulations for archive documents declassification and their classification prolongation has up to recent times been hidden from “onlookers” including journalists and historians.

Russian officials appear to be very ingenious when interpreting and commenting laws. For example, if a government body or a local self-government one wouldn’t like to disclose information following the FOI law, it declares the information in question not subject to this law.

Maintenance of Russian road communications takes huge volumes of funding each year, while results are sometimes difficult to be seen: a newly-mended road quite often needs more mending in some months. To get information on budget expenditures on road construction and maintenance is a way for citizens to control this field. In Novosibirsk, a court decision appeared to be needed to get the data in question.

According to Russian legislation, a new era without gambling started in 2009. But one can see that plenty of casinos, lottery drums and even lottery scams remain the same under new names. And authorities restrict access to information on gambling industry inspections.

Wide usage of FOIA exemptions appears not to be only Russian practice. On December 1, the Supreme Court of the US was reviewing a case of the same kind (Milner v. Department of the Navy).
See the article by Mark Sherman on www.huffingtonpost.com.

Legal attorney has right to access to materials of the case he/she takes part in. Court states that legal attorney has right to access to materials of the case he/she takes part in. However, investigator continues issuing statements prohibiting information access. Is there any logic?

Some officials are still sure that their official information access denials can cause nothing more serious for them than five minutes of shame in court. We should explode this fallacy.