The court decided to block the Readovka website due to an investigation into the business of a State Duma deputy

On June 28, the Vidnovsky City Court of the Moscow Region ruled to block the website Readovka.ru and fined the editorial office for refusing to independently block the media at the suit of State Duma deputy from United Russia Dmitry Sablin and Pavel Grudinin's ex-wife Irina. This was reported on the publication's website.

The court rejected all petitions of the defendants and began to involve experts to analyze the text.

website The reason for the lawsuit was a series of publications on the Readovka , which talk about Sablin's business and the transfer of 41.9% of the shares of Lenin State Farm CJSC to Sablin's control. The investigation also mentions the ex-wife of Grudinin. Readovka called the transfer of shares a raider takeover.

In March, the Vidnovsky court ordered the editorial office to block the site. The editor-in-chief noted that the publication was registered in the Smolensk region, and the blocking trial was supposed to take place there. However, in the lawsuit, the Vidnoe publication was named as a co-respondent, in which a note was written on the Readovka article . According to the editors, the Vidnovsky Court is “extremely loyal to cases in which either the State Duma deputy himself or the interests of his business appear.”

Nadezhda Kuzina, senior lawyer at OVD-Info, noted that blocking the site back in the spring as part of interim measures looks excessive. The fact that the defendant was not given the opportunity to refute the plaintiff's claims by involving experts can be regarded as a manifestation of the interest and bias of the court.

When such demands are made to block a resource, the court must verify the accuracy of the information provided in the publications. The defendant in the public space indicated that he used in his investigations information that is publicly available in state bodies (for example, Rosreestre). If so, then the information cannot be recognized as untrue. Without seeing the court decision, it is difficult to judge its legitimacy, since the court indicates in the decision what kind of information was declared invalid and subject to deletion, and what the court was guided by when making the decision. Since there is still an appeal against the decision of the city court, the story does not end there.