A bill on mandatory opening of branches of large IT companies in Russia has been submitted to the State Duma

A few days ago, Deputy Alexander Khinshtein proposed to oblige large IT companies to open their representative offices in Russia. Now this bill concerning foreign companies with a daily audience of 500 thousand Russian users has been officially submitted to the State Duma. The preliminary review date is June 1.Khinstein told Interfax about this today.

The text of the bill also appeared on the official website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Basic provisionsA foreign company operating on the Internet in the territory of the Russian Federation is obliged to add an electronic form to its website for appeals from Russian citizens and organizations.

• Such IT companies are required to open their branches or establish a legal entity on the territory of the Russian Federation.
• We are talking, among other things, about the operators of advertising systems, hosting providers and organizers of the dissemination of information on the network.Foreign social networks and messengers will also fall under the new bill.
• However, so far it does not concern individual bloggers and channels.In addition, it will be necessary to register a personal account on the Roskomnadzor website for interaction with Russian government agencies.
• The agency will also determine the number of Russian users using one of the special programs (which one is not specified).In addition, Roskomnadzor will maintain a list of foreign IT companies in order to monitor compliance with the laws of the Russian Federation.
• Violators are waiting for possible sanctions, including a ban on advertising and placing advertisements of Russian companies on such sites, as well as a ban on accepting and transferring money.Foreign companies will be able to exclude themselves from this list only if their audience is less than 500 thousand people within three months.
• The initiative of Khinstein, who heads the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, became known on May 13.

According to the deputy, the so-called “landing” law will allow the authorities to punish unscrupulous IT companies.