The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) sent a letter to operators of the QIWI and Skrill payment services, requesting to remove from the web sites information on contractors that use these payment services.

A Roskomnadzor representative informed that certain pages of the payment system sites contain links to Internet casinos and provide an opportunity to transfer money to bookmakers.

At the same time, under Federal Law No.244 dated 29.12.2006, which regulates activity on arranging and conducting gambling, using the Internet for such purposes is prohibited, with the exception of stakes being accepted by centers for recordkeeping of transfers of interactive stakes. That said, such centers can only be established by self-regulating organizations of gambling organizers and must act in line with the Federal Law “On banks and banking activity.”

Therefore, by sending such notices to payment system operators, Roskomnadzor is acting under the powers granted to it under Article 15.1 of Federal Law No.149-FZ “On information, information technology and on protection of information” dated 27.07.2006 on restricting access to sites containing banned information.

To fulfill Roskomnadzor’s instructions and to avoid the domain names and network addresses being entered into the unified register of Internet resources containing information banned in the Russian Federation, the QIWI and Skrill payment services deleted the banned information.

Earlier, Roskomnadzor already entered Internet resources into the register for publishing information on gambling. In June 2016, Roskomnadzor blocked the gambling page on the Amazon S3 cloud service’s site on request of the Russian Federal Tax Service. In addition, web sites of many foreign Internet casinos and bookmakers currently cannot be accessed in Russia.

Dmitry Churin   Principal Associate   St. Petersburg       Tel.: +7 (812) 346 79 90

Gleb Apenkin   Associate    St. Petersburg       Tel.: +7 (812) 346 79 90

Additional notes

Should any questions arise in connection with the above or if you need any additional materials, please contact Dmitry Churin or Gleb Apenkin, St. Petersburg Office of Capital Legal Services.

This Information letter keeps the clients of Capital Legal Services and other interested parties abreast of information that may, to any extent, affect their activity or cater to their particular interests. The opinions and commentaries expressed in this information letter shall not be deemed as legal opinions and do not cancel the need to obtain legal advice or legal opinion on separate issues.