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About the RBC’s Enquiry Related to the Situation around the Association

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Posted in Yury Penov

In response to the enquiry from the RBC information agency about the nature of the infringements revealed by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation concerning the Alumni Association’s performance, as well as about the state of affairs between the University and the Association, we would like to report the following.

The University and the Association have no planned joint events. The Alumni Association takes no part in preparing such significant events of St Petersburg University as Career Days, the Entrant’s Day, the Freshman Initiation Day, Open Days, the Day of the Foundation of the University, and student start-up competitions. In addition, hundreds of extracurricular — cultural, sports, scientific — events are held at the University annually. The Alumni Association does not participate in the organization of any of them.

On 7 June, a Collegium of Honorary Professors of the University meeting took place where Doctor of Philology, Professor Apollinariia Avrutina made a report. In the spring, as she ran for the positions of the executive director and the President of the Association, she encountered organisational breaches in the delegate election procedure to the general meeting and the administration of the Association. As a result, she appealed to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation with a request to have the organization’s performance audited. The Main Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for St Petersburg states in its reply that:

  1. The Charter of the Association does not comply with the requirements of the current legislation of the Russian Federation.
  2. In violation of paragraph 2 of article 65.3, paragraph 3 of article 123.1 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the definition of the standard operating procedure of the supreme governance body has been transferred to the Board and the approval of the agenda has been transferred to the executive director.
  3. In violation of paragraph 2 of Article 14 of the Federal Law ’On Non-Profit Organisations’ dated 12 January 1996 No. 7-FZ, the Association failed to comply with the provisions of the Charter governing the order of forming and fulfilling the activities of the advisory council in the period under review.
  4. In violation of paragraph 1 of article 65.2 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the approval of one candidate suggested by the HR committee to be elected for the position of executive director based on the interview results violates the right of the association members to take part in governing the association and electing the executive director..
  5. In violation of paragraph 1 of article 65.2 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the existing provisions of organising the conference and electing the delegates determined by the Board (hereinafter — the Provisions) violate the right of the association members to take part in the association governance:
    • not all association members have the information on the conference, since paragraph 3.6 of the Provisions determines different procedures of informing the members (via the provided e-mails of the association members and/or via publication of the information on the official website of the association);
    • the existing procedure of electing the delegates does not allow determining who exactly those 100 members represented by the delegate are;
    • the election of the delegate is limited by the order of application (in case of an equal number of votes for the candidate, only those candidates who had formed their applications earlier become delegates);
    • the quorum on the number of members that should take part in the vote to elect delegates for participation in the conference has not been established.

The Collegium of Honorary Professors of St Petersburg University recommended starting terminating the agreement between St Petersburg University and the Alumni Association and incorporating a new alumni association of St Petersburg University — Leningrad State University upon establishing a corresponding committee.

The participants of the Rector’s meeting held on 8 June supported these proposals.

For detailed information, please refer to the Minutes of the Rector’s Meetings dated 28 December 2020, 18 January 2021, 08 June 2021.

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