MOSCOW, August 20. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s consumer rights watchdog (Rospotrebnadzor) has filed administrative lawsuits against four McDonald’s restaurants in Moscow after finding violations in their work.

Rospotrebnadzor experts have also suspended their operations.

One of the outlets is the historic MacDonalds at 29, Bolshaya Bronnaya Street, which is known across the former Soviet Union as the MacDonalds on Pushkin Square - the first Western fast-food venture in the USSR that opened in January 1990 and ushered in an era of up-to-date fast-food catering industry in this country.

Rospotrebnadzor said the decision to close the four outlets temporarily was taken on the basis of ‘violations’ that had been exposed in the course of inspections.

Materials on the operations of the outlets will be submitted to court, the agency said.

Earlier Russian veterinary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor has started a probe into products used in McDonald's food chain as it doubts the fast food chain’s product quality. 

In May, a planned examination in two fast food chain restaurants in Novgorod showed that actual protein, fat and carbohydrate content and total energy value of some products considerably exceeded the amounts declared.