The Magistrate’s Court of the Tagansky district of Moscow fined Twitter and Facebook 4 million rubles ($63,000) for refusing to localize Russian databases in the Russian Federation, Interfax reported.
As stated in the decision of the judge, the court recognized the “foreign legal entities Twitter and Facebook Inc. guilty of an offense under Article h8 of 13.11 Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (the operator’s failure to collect, organize, accumulate and store personal data of Russians using databases located in Russia).
Earlier it was reported that the Tagansky district magistrate’s court scheduled for February 13 the consideration of administrative cases against Twitter and Facebook for the refusal of companies to localize the databases of Russians in Russia.
On January 31, Roskomnadzor instituted administrative proceedings against Facebook, Inc and Twitter, Inc. These companies did not timely fulfill the requirements for localizing the databases of Russian users of the corresponding social networks on servers located on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Earlier, the head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov warned that these companies had time until January 31 to respond to a request for localization of data from Russian users. The department noted that almost all 100% of sites comply with this requirement for localization.
The penalty for refusing to store personal data in Russia was increased in 2019. Previously, there was no punishment for failure to comply with the requirements to localize the databases of Russians, and companies were punished under another article – “Failure to provide information” (The maximum penalty was from 3 to 5 thousand rubles, which is $78.). At the moment, the amount of the fine for violating the article for legal entities is from one million to six million rubles($94,500).
