Moscow court fines investigative outlet The Insider for noncompliance with ‘foreign agent’ disclosure

A district court in Moscow has fined the investigative news outlet The Insider for refusing to add “foreign agent” disclaimers to its materials, reports the official Telegram channel of the Moscow courts.

On Tuesday, December 14, the Moscow courts’ press service announced that the Tagansky District Court had ordered The Insider to pay a total of 1 million rubles ($13,600) in fines for administrative violations of Russia’s “foreign agent” legislation. 

However, the case file on the Tagansky Court’s website only lists one December 14 ruling on an administrative protocol against The Insider. According to Apologia Protesta, the court only considered one protocol against the investigative outlet on Tuesday and imposed only one fine, totaling 500,000 rubles ($6,800).

The Russian Justice Ministry blacklisted The Insider as “foreign agent” in July 2021. In turn, The Insider‘s editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov stated that the publication would continue to operate as normal and would not comply with Russian law, as it is based in Latvia.

The Insider was established in 2013 and is best known as Bellingcat‘s investigative partner in Russia. The two groups have jointly published multiple bombshell investigations about Russian intelligence operations at home and around the world.