Russian Registrar Fined EUR 6 M for Domain Registration Violations

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) has recently found Russia’s largest domain registrar Ru-Center guilty of violating the domain name registration rules and ordered it to pay a fine of approximately EUR 5.7 million (USD 8.2 million), which is equivalent to the amount of the registrar’s illegally obtained income.

According to FAS, there was a limit to the registrations that a single registrar could make during the first day of open registration of domains in the Cyrillic zone .рф in November 2010. In order to bypass the limit, Ru-Center concluded agreements with several other registrars, which formally acted on their own behalf, but actually, registered the domains for Ru-Center. Ru-Center then allegedly sold the domains during online auctions.

For more information, please contact Yuriy Karlash at our Ukraine office.

Source: Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS)