MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - A justice of the peace in Moscow has imposed a 2-million-ruble administrative fine on Wikimedia Foundation Inc. over failure to remove incorrect information about the events unfolding in Ukraine from Wikipedia.
"To impose an administrative fine of 2 million rubles on Wikimedia Foundation," Timur Vakhrameyev, justice of the peace of Judicial District No. 422 in Moscow's Tagansky district, said in his ruling.
The Wikimedia Foundation was found guilty of failing to remove prohibited information.
According to the administrative case materials read out in court, Wikimedia was charged in January 2023 with failing to remove information described as fake by the oversight agency from a number of Wikipedia articles about certain Russian military units and a number of materials associated with the Russian special military operation in Ukraine at the demand of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.
The Wikimedia lawyer asked the court to drop the proceeding, noting, in particular, that no administrative inquiry had been made and the motion from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office did not contain specific links to prove the inaccuracy of information provided by the online encyclopedia. He also said that questionable information came from public sources.
A justice of the peace fined Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 2 million rubles in November 2022 over a similar offense.
In recent years, all major online services, such as Google, Telegram, Facebook (an information resource of an entity prohibited in Russia), Twitter and TikTok, have been repeatedly held liable in Russia over failure to remove prohibited content.