The court banned the “reproduction” of news about Kostin

The final court decision on VTB's claims for the protection of business reputation was published on February 11, 2019. It is in it, as The Bell found out, that it speaks of a ban on “repeated reproduction and dissemination” in the Russian Federation of information from already blocked materials about Andrei Kostin, which VTB has disputed since April 2018. Lawyers say the blockages are still illegal.

What's happened. Roskomnadzor blocked more than 1,000 materials about VTB head Andrei Kostin, Vedomosti noted . Most of them concerned his relationship with VGTRK journalist Nailya Asker-zade and the apartment in her property, which previously belonged to VTB. The parties themselves do not comment on the situation; information about the owners of the apartment in the center of Moscow is confirmed by Rosreestr (Vedomosti writes). Since last year, VTB has filed at least 4 lawsuits in court in St. Petersburg demanding that the information disseminated about Kostin be declared defamatory and untrue.

• The first VTB lawsuits concerned materials that were clearly custom-made, which contained personal insults and many unconfirmed facts. Materials were posted mainly on portals whose administrators and editorial locations are hidden. In Internet jargon, such sites are called “dumpsters.” When some sites were blocked, information appeared on others, and then VTB, when going to court for the fourth time on this problem, indicated that previous decisions had not helped protect the bank’s reputation.

The most important. But in February of this year, the court made a broader decision , which in theory allows Roskomnadzor to block not already published materials, but the “reproduction and dissemination” of the information contained in them on the territory of the Russian Federation - while what kind of information is not specified in this part of the court decision.

• No one has yet paid attention to this court decision, because Roskomnadzor did not refer to it, but to last year’s decisions. In particular, when sending a letter to Yandex.Zen demanding that the Baza project’s investigation into Kostin be blocked, the department referred to a decision that was made in the fall of 2018. This court decision dealt with publications on 14 websites (chel.pro, news-sirotin.com, rnbee.ru, kompromat1.net and others). The court sided with VTB and all of them were deleted or blocked. But the decision made no mention of removing similar information from anywhere else.

The professionals speak. This decision can hardly be called a precedent, says Norton Rose Fulbright advisor Alexey Borodak. Roskomnadzor can block for various reasons - by order of the prosecutor's office, a court decision or its own justifications. “Roskomnadzor is an executive body that does not analyze the correctness of decisions,” he says. “Any person whose rights and interests are affected by this decision can challenge this court decision. But this can only be done within a month, that is, in this case, The appeal period expires literally tomorrow. After this decision, the decision of the arbitration court does not have to be executed until it enters into legal force.”