Russia hits marketplaces with fines up to 500,000 rubles

Russia’s State Duma has passed, in its third and final reading, a law introducing administrative penalties for owners of digital platforms that violate platform economy rules. The measure applies to marketplaces, delivery services, classified ad aggregators, and other online platforms.

The document adds new offenses to the Code of Administrative Offenses and sets fines for platform operators, their officials, and sellers.

For posting unverified information in a product listing, or for unjustifiably deleting a listing or restricting access to it, officials face fines of 30,000 to 80,000 rubles, while companies can be fined 50,000 to 100,000 rubles.

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Penalties are higher for violations involving discounts and price reductions: 30,000 to 80,000 rubles for officials and 100,000 to 300,000 rubles for companies.

The toughest penalties target platforms that ignore user complaints or fail to handle disputes. In those cases, legal entities can be fined up to 500,000 rubles.

The law also adds penalties for platform actions affecting sellers, including:

• unjustified blocking of access to a personal account
• lowering a seller’s rating
• changing a product’s position in search results
• failing to verify information about sellers and pickup point owners
• unilaterally changing contract terms
• violating rules for search algorithms

For those violations, officials face fines of 30,000 to 80,000 rubles, and companies face 100,000 to 400,000 rubles.

Sellers themselves will also be liable for violations when posting product offers. A first offense carries fines of 5,000 to 30,000 rubles for officials and 30,000 to 70,000 rubles for companies. For a repeat offense, the fines rise to 10,000 to 50,000 rubles and 70,000 to 200,000 rubles, respectively.