On December 22, Roskomnadzor removed the online aggregator of cryptocurrency exchangers Bestchange.ru from the register of banned sites. ForkLog was informed of this by service representatives.
According to them, access to the resource was restored a month after the Arkhangelsk Regional Court considered Bestchange’s appeal and quashed the Kotlas City Court’s decision to block the site dated January 22, 2020.
This block, lasting 118 days, was the site’s third.
Valeriya Smirnova, a lawyer for Bestchange.ru at the Digital Rights Center, said that various courts and administrative plaintiffs provide the same legal justification for the blockage:
“The plaintiff states that cryptocurrency is a monetary surrogate, prohibited under the law ‘On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’, and that the circulation of cryptocurrency has no legal regulation, is outside state control, and, therefore, poses a potential danger.”
Smirnova added that the basis for overturning the initial court decision was that the site owners were not involved in the case and learned about the blocking only in July, after Roskomnadzor notified them.
Now the Kotlas City Court must reexamine the case that the regional court returned to it. The next hearing is scheduled for January 14, 2021.
Since 2017, Roskomnadzor has repeatedly added the Bestchange.ru cryptocurrency exchange aggregator to the list of banned resources for disseminating prohibited information about the possibility to buy bitcoin and pay for certain goods with it. The last time the block was lifted was on November 25.
In early December, Arkhangelsk’s Oktyabrsky District Court ruled to block the service’s mirror Bestchange.net for information about counterfeit money.
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