Law Journal of the National Academy of Internal Affairs

Legal institutionalisation of lobbying allows distinguishing legitimate representation of interests from corruption risks and hidden influence on government decisions. The launch of the Transparency Register in September 202, the negotiating framework for joining the European Union and countering armed aggression have actualised the need to study the American experience. The purpose of the study was to establish the conditions under which the American model of parallel disclosure regimes can be used to build a national system that combines the transparency of internal lobbying with the control of foreign influence. The methodology was based on comparative legal, historical legal, teleological, and system structural methods, supplemented by documentary and descriptive quantitative analysis of the documented body within the narrowed subject. It was established that the two American regimes differ not so much in the degree of severity as in their legal nature: the first regulates representation of interests as a component of the democratic process, the second is an instrument of national security. It was shown that their interaction is not a conflict, but a legally stipulated intersection of regimes: an exception allows an agent of a foreign private principal to fulfil the obligation under a stricter regime by registering under a milder one, but does not apply if the principal or main beneficiary of the activity is a foreign government or a foreign political party. It was proved that the possibility of inter-regime substitution is generated by a combination of four conditions: self-qualification of the subject, the estimated content of the concepts of “control” and “main beneficiary”, the absence of preliminary verification of the selected regime, and a significant difference in sanctions and the probability of control. The analysis showed that an independent charge under the provision of failure to register became the basis of the verdict in only one position, in two more violations of this norm were the object of conspiracy, in three registrability was recognised in out-of-court procedures, and five other positions were qualified exclusively according to related norms; due to the heterogeneity of subjects, stages and procedures, the established frequencies are descriptive in nature. Recommendations were formulated for differentiating regimes based on the legal nature of the principal, procedural normalisation of the grounds for transferring materials to law enforcement agencies, and expanding the scope of information disclosure in compliance with proportionality requirements.