Russian monitoring agency, Roskomnadzor, removed “Zuckerberg calls” site from the blacklist after one paragraph was deleted from the bitcoin related article. This February, one of the courts in the Russian region of Astrakhan blacklisted the site because of bitcoin.

The site is removed from the blacklist, says the state-owned “Rossiyskaya gazeta” (The Russian Newspaper).

As CoinFox reported earlier, “Zuckerberg will call”, one of the leading websites in the Russian media covering news on IT business and start-ups, was added to the list of domains banned in the country for publishing an article on bitcoin. Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications sector regulator, announced it on 28 July, 2015.

The reason for this was the court decision. The article called “What are bitcoins, and who needs them?” was blacklisted by a court of the Astrakhan region for “propaganda of crimes related to the legalisation of money or other property received through crime (money laundering) and propaganda of illicit transactions”. The decision was made in February 2015.

The site’s representative later stated that he would not delete the article from the site and turned to the regulator for the clarification. Today Roskomnadzor contacted the court in Astrakhan. They found out, that the court decision was caused by the mention of “criminal activities” in the article about bitcoin.

The editors of “Zuckerberg will call” deleted the troubled paragraph and Roskomnadzor removed the website from the blacklist. 

The swiftness of regulators’ action gave way to rumours about possible connections between Roskomnadzor and the independent site “Zuckerberg will call”. Another aspect of the events that raises questions is the swiftness of the news piece publication in the state-owned “Rossiyskaya gazeta”.

Roman Korizky