The homes of three Moscow-based Golos activists were raided yesterday morning. At around 7am, police officers and Investigative Committee personnel began searching the apartments of Grigory Melkonyants, Tatiana Troinova, and Roman Udot. Law enforcement authorities are also planning to search Golos’ Moscow offices.

The searches are connected with a tax evasion case launched in February against Lyudmila Kuzmina, head of the Samara region branch of Golos, which, so authorities claim, owes 2.2 million roubles in taxes on income from foreign donations. Earlier, Kuzmina’s own apartment had been searched in connection with the case, and all her office equipment confiscated.

According to lawyer Olga Gnezdilova, the raid on the Moscow apartments of the Golos activists was conducted at the request of investigators in Samara.

All of Grigory Melkonyants’ office equipment and documents were confiscated during the search.

According to Ramil Akhmetgaliev, a lawyer for the Agora Association, the criminal case against Lyudmila Kuzmina should be discontinued for at least two distinct reasons. The statute of limitations expired in late March 2015. In addition, the case is covered by an amnesty. However, the investigators dismissed the request to discontinue the case, citing the need to identify whether Kuzmina has committed any other offences. “We’ll look for something else,” the investigators said. “Which, it would appear, is what they’re doing this morning in Moscow,” said Akhmetgaliev.

Golos is an independent elections monitoring organisation. Open Russia and Golos are cooperating on the Open Elections project, which will be monitoring the transparency and fairness of the upcoming elections cycle in Russia.