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Court repeatedly fines Twitch over $67,770 for refusal to delete video with Zelensky aide

It is noted that the court found Twitch Interactive Inc. guilty under part 2 article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation

MOSCOW, October 4. /TASS/. A court in Moscow has repeatedly fined the Twitch streaming service 4 mln rubles ($67,770) over its refusal to delete a video interview with Ukrainian Presidential Aide Alexey Arestovich.

TASS was informed about it by an official of the Peace of Court Section No. 422, where the decision in question was handed down.

"The court found Twitch Interactive Inc. guilty under part 2 article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (failure of the owner of a website to delete information if the obligation to delete such information is included in the legislation of the Russian Federation) and sentenced it to a fine of 4 mln rubles," the court’s judge Timur Vakrameyev read out the decision.

According to the case files, which were earlier voiced at the judicial process, the reason for this decision was the platform’s refusal to remove an interview Arestovich gave to former lawyer Mark Feigin l(registered as a foreign agent). According to the Russian media watchdog, the interview contained unreliable information about the strikes of the Russian Aerospace Forces on the territory of Odessa during a special operation in Ukraine.

Speaking in court, the company’s representative stressed that at the time the protocol was drawn up by the media watchdog, the given interview had been deleted. He demanded that the case be dismissed for lack of corpus delicti, but the court did not agree with it.

Earlier, Twitch was fined 3 million rubles ($50,854) for publishing a similar stream with an interview with Arestovich to Feigin (registered as a foreign agent).

Since July 14, the Russian authorities have taken enforcement measures against Twitch for not deleting illegal information: search engines inform users about the company's violation of Russian law. The measures taken against Twitch will be in effect until the company completely eliminates violations of Russian law, the media watchdog reported earlier. Earlier, the peace court in Moscow also fined Twitch 2 million rubles ($33,885) for refusing to localize the data of Russian users in the Russian Federation.

Twitch Interactive is a subsidiary of Amazon. It owns a video streaming service specializing in computer games, including broadcasts of gameplay and eSports tournaments. Videos on Twitch can be viewed both live and on demand. Twitch annually invites popular authors from different countries, including the CIS, to public events and private parties. Among them: TwitchCon, Twitch Rivals.