Moscow court fines Telegram 4 mln rubles for failure to delete banned content

MOSCOW. Nov 21 (Interfax) - Moscow's Tagansky District Court has imposed a four-million-ruble fine on the Telegram online messenger service for failing to delete information that is subject to access restrictions, the court told Interfax.

"Telegram Messenger Inc. has been issued a penalty in the form of an administrative fine of 4,000,000 rubles," the court said.

Telegram was found guilty of failing to delete information that must be removed. The maximum possible fine under the corresponding article of the Russian Code of Administrative Offences has been imposed on the messenger service.

According to the corresponding administrative offence protocol, the messenger service was accused of failing to delete previously published information about the Russian Armed Forces, information containing justification of extremist activities, information concerning the illegal sale of and cashing in on Pushkin Cards, as well as information aimed at destabilizing the situation in the country from several channels at the request of the Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor, it said.

The court also ruled on Tuesday to fine Akamai (Akamai Technologies Inc.) 800,000 rubles for the hosting provider's failure to take measures to restrict access to banned information. According to court records, Roskomnadzor and the North Ossetia Prosecutor's Office had questions for the hosting provider with regard to some extremist audio recordings on Apple Music and its failure to delete adverts published on the Alibaba marketplace about goods prohibited for sale in Russia.

Over the past few years, major online service providers such as Google, Telegram, Facebook (the information resource of an organization banned in Russia), Twitter, TikTok, and the Wikimedia foundation have repeatedly been found liable in Russia for failing to delete banned content.