UNDERSTANDING U.S. FARA

FARA is short for the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended, 33 U.S.C. § 611 et seq. and is under the U.S. Department of Justice.  The purpose of FARA is to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws. FARA applies to foreign governments, foreign political parties, a person or organization outside the United States, except U.S. citizens and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its place of business in a foreign country.

1. The Act requires every agent of a foreign principal, not otherwise exempt, to register with the U.S. Department of Justice and file forms outlining its agreements with, income from, and expenditures on behalf of the foreign principal. These forms are public records and must be supplemented every six months.
2. The Act also requires that informational material be labeled with a conspicuous statement that the information is disseminated by the agents on behalf of the foreign principal. The agent must provide copies of such materials to the U.S. Attorney General?
3. An agent testifying before a committee of the U.S. Congress must furnish the committee with a copy of his most recent registration statement.
4. The agent must keep records of all his activities and permit the U.S. Attorney General to inspect them.

One must register within ten days of agreeing to become an agent and before performing any activities for the foreign principal. Failure to register, keep accounts, mark informational materials, provide a congressional committee with a copy of the agent's most recent registration, and agreeing to a contingent fee based on the success of political activity are violations of the Act. The FARA Unit seeks to obtain voluntary compliance with the statute.

The following are exempt from FARA Registration:

• Diplomats and officials of foreign governments and their staff are exempt if properly recognized by the U.S. Department;
• Persons whose activities are of a purely commercial nature or solely of a religious, scholastic, academic, scientific or fine arts nature are exempt;
• Certain soliciting or collecting of funds to be used for medical aid, or for food and clothing, to relieve human suffering are also exempt;
• Lawyers engaged in legal representation of foreign principals in the courts or similar type proceedings, so long as the attorney does not try to influence policy at the behest of his client are exempt;
• Any agent who is engaged in lobbying activities and is registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act is exempt of registration under FARA  if the representation is not on behalf of a foreign government or foreign political party.

Unlike the Washington firms hired directly by foreign governments, some countries slip their American agenda through an increasingly popular loophole in FARA allowing them to follow the minimal disclosure practices required of domestic corporate lobbies, not the extensive ones demanded of registered foreign agents. And some countries appear to have found an alternative, one through which, in some cases they don't have to comply with any registration requirements at all. The trick is this: Any entity controlled and funded by a foreign government is formally required to be registered as a foreign principal. But as long as the entity is formally a  nongovernmental organization and isn't funded by a government- a chamber of commerce, an advocacy group, or some other entity, the law does not apply. For better or for worse, it's legal. Those groups register instead under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, whose roots are in anti-corruption crusadse of the 1990's but which is far less onerous. The two laws (Lobbying Disclosure Act and FARA) evolved in completely different ways. In particular an LDA filing shows very little about what the lobbyists actually did for their clients, while FARA filings require disclosures of specific duties and expenses.

If a U.S.-based group has foreign nationals on its board, those individuals must register under FARA. Nonprofits of course aren't the only foreign entities that find a way around FARA. Foreign corporations from countries without a clear line between commerce and state power fly through a similar loophole. The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, for example, isn't listed anywhere in FARA but is pending millions on multiple lobbying contracts filed under the LDA. It's the same company that U.S. officials have accused of spying and that is mentioned in news reports about the suspicious death of Shane Tood, an American who had been working in Singapore with the Institute of Mircoelectronics and reportedly quit beacuse he was worried that dealings with Huawei would harm U.S. national security.