The court dismissed the administrative case of a Samara deputy about fakes about coronavirus

The Oktyabrsky District Court of Samara terminated the administrative case of Communist deputy of the provincial Duma Mikhail Matveev for tweets about coronavirus, Legal Aid Headquarters reports , citing Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer for the international human rights group Agora.

The defender added that the case under Part 9 of Article 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (dissemination of unreliable socially significant information under the guise of reliable information) was discontinued due to the absence of an administrative offense in Matveev’s actions.

The reason for drawing up the protocol was a series of tweets from the deputy on March 29, in which he published screenshots of a message from an unknown Telegram user . The reports claimed that an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Samara region was infected with coronavirus.

As Seleznev clarified in a conversation with Mediazona, Matveev also published tweets about the concealment of infection by the leadership of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the absence of quarantine measures in relation to other contact employees of the employees. The next day, Matveev deleted the tweets.

“We have proven that at the time of publication there was not the slightest doubt about the validity of the information,” the lawyer said.

Earlier on May 7, the same court fined the deputy 45 thousand under the same article for tweets demanding that information about a positive test for coronavirus be checked among residents of Novokuibyshevsk. An appeal in this administrative case was scheduled for June 18.