MOSCOW, May 12. /TASS/. The magistrate court of Moscow’s Tagansky District fined the Telegram messenger service a total amount of 5 mln rubles (over $67,000) following its refusal to remove two instances of urging minors to participate in unauthorized rallies in Moscow as reported by the media watchdog, the Tagansky Court’s press service told TASS.
"The court found Telegram guilty following the second report, filed for Part 2, Article 13.41 of the Russian Administrative Violations Code (failure to remove information by the site owner in case the duty to remove such information is provided for in the Russian legislation) and imposed a penalty of 2.5 mln rubles (over $33,500 - TASS). The total amount of the fine for two reports amounts to 5 mln rubles," the court said.
Earlier, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media filed two reports against Telegram for violation of Part 2, Article 13.41 of the Russian Administrative Violations Code.
In early April, the magistrate court No. 422 of Moscow’s Tagansky District fined Twitter 8.9 mln rubles (over $119,000) following three administrative reports of the media watchdog for refusing to remove information calling minors to participate in illegal rallies. The company has already filed a complaint against these decisions. The agency has filed similar reports against Facebook, Google and Telegram. Additionally, TikTok was fined 2.6 mln rubles (over $34,000) for a similar violation.
According to the media watchdog, over 2,500 materials calling for the participation in illegal rallies were detected in social networks in January and February. Legal entities are fined for such a violation in the range from 800,000 to 4 mln rubles ($10,760 to $53,800). In case of a repeated violation, the fine will be increased to one tenth of the company’s total annual earnings.