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Putin signs law on penalties for storage of Russians’ personal data overseas

The document also provides for higher payments for web-based search engines in case of their repeated violations of effective restrictions, including by referring users to banned sites

MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law introducing multi-million penalties for failure to comply with requirements for the storage of personal data of Russians in the country. The document was posted on the official website of legal information on Monday.

The Russian Code of Administrative Offenses is supplemented by a norm introducing penalties for operators that failed to comply with the requirement for systematization and keeping of information in databases exclusively in the territory of Russia when gathering personal data of Russians, including via the Internet, i.e. which use repositories overseas. Fines for such an administrative offense are set as 30,000-50,000 ($466.9 - $778.1) rubles for individuals, 100,000-200,000 rubles ($1,557 - $3,112) for officials, and from 1 mln to 6 mln rubles ($15,580 - $93,480) for legal entities.

Fines will be higher in case of a repeated violation. They will total in such case from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles ($778.1 - 1,557) for individuals, from 500,000 to 800,000 rubles ($7,790 - $12,460) for officials, and from 6 to 18 mln rubles ($93,480 - 280,500) for legal entities.

Furthermore, a penalty is set for a repeated failure of an operator to comply with the requirement, whereby it should notify federal authorities about launching new programs for data receipt and processing. Such violation will entail a fine worth 5,000 - 10,000 rubles ($77.9 - $155.8) for individuals, from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles ($778.1 - 1,557) for officials, and from 500,000 to 1 mln rubles ($7,790 - $15,580) for legal entities.

The document also provides for higher payments for web-based search engines in case of their repeated violations of effective restrictions, including by referring users to banned sites. Fines are also stipulated for provision of links to banned resources to users.