The press service of the courts of general jurisdiction of the city of Moscow reported on four fines imposed on foreign companies for the same amount – 500 thousand rubles – and under the same article – Part 1.1 of Art. 13.31 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. Articles N422 and 371 of the Tagansky Court fined the companies WhatsApp*, Keybase, Wire Swiss, Radical App and Status Research & Development.
The specified article “Failure to fulfill obligations by the organizer of dissemination of information on the Internet” in part 1.1 provides for punishment in the form of a fine for failure to notify the authorized federal executive body.
The company is obliged to notify “about the start of activities to ensure the functioning of information systems and (or) programs for electronic computers that are intended and (or) used to receive, transmit, deliver and (or) process electronic messages from Internet. users.” .
Judging by the amount of the fine (500 thousand rubles for each company), this is already a repeated violation, since for the primary the amount of the fine for a legal entity does not exceed 300 thousand.
Status Research & Development is the developer of the Status: Crypto Wallet app for Android, where users can exchange messages. The software, which combines a messenger, a crypto wallet and a Web3 browser, already has more than 1 million installations (the IT company has been operating since 2020).
Wire Swiss is a software company best known in the world for its Wire Messenger.
Keybase is a directory of public cryptographic keys, but the developer also has a messenger, with a higher level of message encryption (Keybase Chat), as well as a secure cloud file storage system (KBFS) and Git repositories.
Radical App is a new generation messenger with recommendations: based on the interests of contacts and friends on social networks, the software offers a list of nearby people with similar hobbies.
The best-known company in the Russian Federation is WhatsApp*, the developer of the messenger of the same name. Previously, the Tagansky court had already fined her (in the summer of 2023) 3 million rubles, but under a different article, part 2 of art. 13.41 Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (refusal to delete prohibited information). A year earlier, a fine was imposed for violating the law on “landing” (localization of user data on the territory of the Russian Federation) – 4 million rubles.
In the fall of 2023 it became known that WhatsApp* was afraid to launch new channels in Russia, as this could threaten a complete block.
* belongs to Meta, which is recognized as extremist in the Russian Federation and is therefore banned.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
