Putin signs law on turnover fines for media censorship

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that introduces a turnover fine for censorship in the media: from 1/20 to 1/10 of the total amount of revenue received by the company in the calendar year preceding the year in which the offense was detected, but not less than 4 million rubles . Prior to the adoption of the law, such a fine ranged from 600 thousand to 1 million rubles.

The change is made to Art. 19.7.10-3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (Failure by the owner of an information resource involved in violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation, warning about the need to stop illegal actions).

For a repeated violation, a fine for companies can range from 1/10 to 1/5 of the total amount of revenue, but not less than 8 million rubles. (previously the fine was 3 million rubles).

The law also introduces fines for the illegal sale of sim cards. Citizens and officials face a fine of 30-50 thousand rubles, legal entities – 300-500 thousand rubles.

A fine will be imposed on operators who provided services to corporate subscribers, information about which is not included in the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA) or if this information is found to be unreliable. For legal entities, such a fine will amount to 1-2 million rubles, for officials – 100-200 thousand rubles. Similar measures will be applied when providing services to legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in the absence of information in the ESIA to identify such subscribers and their user equipment.

The law introduces penalties for non-compliance by the operator with the established procedure for verifying the accuracy of information about its users (including legal entities and individual entrepreneurs) or for the provision of services in case of failure to confirm the accuracy of information about users. For legal entities, this is 300-500 thousand rubles, for officials – 30-50 thousand rubles. Operators who fail to provide Roskomnadzor with the information necessary to monitor compliance with the obligation to verify the accuracy of information about subscribers face the same fines.

Daria Erozbek