🇷🇺Regulating Info-Products and Influencers: Advertising, Registers, Liability

A single perimeter: four layers instead of one "bloggers' law"

Info-products, influencer advertising and content creation are, in regulatory logic, a single phenomenon. A course author sells his own product, an influencer sells access to an audience, a streamer sells attention in the moment — but what is monetised is the same construction: personal trust converted into a commercial message. Regulators therefore arrive at an identical toolkit whether they started from consumer law, from audiovisual regulation or from tax.

The perimeter breaks down into four layers. The first is disclosure: the duty to mark the commercial character of a publication so that the audience grasps it immediately, without scrolling. The second is market access: registers, licences and permits — the requirement to become visible to the state first and only then to earn. The third is subject-matter prohibition: platforms on which nothing may be placed, and verticals in which nothing may be promoted without a special status — finance, medicine, gambling, advertising to children. The fourth is money: the tax regime, sector levies, platform withholding and cross-border reporting, with criminal liability at the far end of the scale.

The layers are built independently and almost nowhere gathered into a single statute: in the EU disclosure comes from consumer and audiovisual law, access from Spanish and Italian instruments, money from DAC7; in the United States disclosure sits wholly with the FTC and there is no access layer at all; Russia has all four at once. The conclusion for a creator with an international audience is that compliance in one country creates no presumption of compliance in another, because the triggers differ — place of establishment, location of the audience, domain zone, payment infrastructure.

Disclosure and ad labelling

The only layer that exists everywhere. What differs is who sets the rule, how formalised the marker is, and what a mistake costs.

The EU. As at August 2026 there is no pan-European influencer statute. Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act), applicable to all intermediaries since 17 February 2024, requires platforms by article 26(2) to let a user declare that his content is a commercial communication and, where such a declaration is made, to display a clear and identifiable marker: the obligation formally rests on the platform, the actual declarant is the creator. Article 25 prohibits dark patterns, article 26(3) advertising based on profiling using special categories of data, and article 28(2) profiling using minors' data; the cap under articles 52(3) and 74 is 6% of annual worldwide turnover. The second pillar is audiovisual: article 28b(3) of Directive 2010/13/EU as amended by Directive (EU) 2018/1808 requires video-sharing platforms to provide a function allowing the uploader to declare the presence of commercial communications — the Spanish and Italian models grew out of it. The third pillar is consumer law: point 11 of Annex I to Directive 2005/29/EC treats undisclosed paid editorial content as a misleading practice. On the horizon is the Digital Fairness Act: the Commission proposal is announced for the fourth quarter of 2026 and addresses influencer marketing, dark patterns and the protection of minors — but that is an announcement, not a rule.

The United States. The FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) in their 2023 edition require disclosure of a material connection — any link with the advertiser not obvious to the audience and capable of affecting the weight given to the recommendation: money, free product, a discount, an affiliate programme, family ties, employment. The disclosure must be clear and conspicuous: on the same platform, in the same format, before the point of decision, and not hidden behind a "more" button. The 2023 revision extended the notion of endorser to virtual figures and fixed the liability of advertisers and agencies for the creators they engage. The second instrument is the Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465), in force since 21 October 2024: it bans fake reviews, conditioning payment on the sentiment expressed, undisclosed insider reviews, suppression of negative feedback by threats, and trade in false indicators of influence — bots, purchased followers, fictitious views. Unlike the Guides this is a rule, and breach of it opens the way to civil penalties: the maximum under 16 CFR 1.98 is $53,088 per violation (for penalties assessed after 17 January 2025), and each individual review may count as a violation.

The United Kingdom. Rule 2.1 of the CAP Code requires advertising to be obviously identifiable, rule 2.3 that it not be confusable with editorial content, and rule 2.4 that advertising which is not obvious be clearly labelled. The ASA and CMA guidance (third edition, 23 March 2023) insists on "Ad", "Advert" or "Advertisement" and rejects "#sp", "#spon", "#collab" and unlabelled affiliate links. The ASA itself cannot fine; the teeth belong to the CMA: the consumer provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 apply from 6 April 2025 and empower it to find an infringement without going to court and to impose a fine of up to 10% of worldwide turnover, with hidden advertising and fake reviews expressly listed among the prohibited practices.

France. Loi n° 2023-451 of 9 June 2023 is the first dedicated statute in the EU; article 1 defines commercial influence as the mobilisation of one's own notoriety for reward to promote goods or services by electronic means. Article 5 requires an express indication, legible throughout the publication — "Publicité" or "Collaboration commerciale"; its absence is a misleading commercial practice under the Consumer Code, carrying up to two years' imprisonment and €300,000. A separate provision imposes one year's imprisonment and €4,500 for failing to disclose retouching or the virtual origin of images, and article 8 requires a written contract above a remuneration threshold set by decree, on pain of nullity. Ordonnance n° 2024-978 of 6 November 2024 aligned the statute with EU law, above all with the country-of-origin principle.

Spain and Italy implemented article 28b of the AVMSD through a status of "user of special relevance". Real Decreto 444/2024 of 30 April 2024 (in force from 2 May 2024) sets cumulative criteria for a usuario de especial relevancia: gross income from activity on video-sharing platforms of at least €300,000 in the preceding year, at least 1,000,000 followers on a single service or 2,000,000 in aggregate, and at least 24 videos a year. Such a creator must comply with article 121 of Ley 13/2022, the General Audiovisual Communication Act — commercial communications must be clearly separated from editorial content by optical, acoustic or spatial means. Italy proceeds through AGCOM: delibera 7/24/CONS introduced guiding principles, and delibera 197/25/CONS of 8 August 2025 updated the linee guida and the code of conduct. The relevance threshold is 500,000 followers on at least one platform or 1,000,000 average monthly views. "Pubblicità", "ADV" and "Sponsorizzato da" are acceptable; "in collaborazione con" and "in partnership with" are rejected as failing to make the commercial nature plain. The marker goes at the start of the caption before the "more" button, in the opening frames of a video, is repeated during live streams and appears in every story; "gifted by" is prescribed for gifts and "#invitedby" for invitations.

Germany managed without a dedicated statute. Three judgments of the Federal Court of Justice of 9 September 2021 (I ZR 90/20, 125/20, 126/20) drew the line: a publication made against consideration must be labelled, one without consideration need not, because the telemedia rules are specific and exhaustive; a tap tag creates no duty, a direct link to the manufacturer's site generally does. Since 28 May 2022 the rule has been codified in § 5a(4) of the Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG): commercial purpose must be disclosed unless it is apparent from the context, but the purpose is not treated as commercial in the absence of consideration received or agreed. This is the only model with a clear answer on free gifts — and the answer is not the FTC's.

The UAE. The disclosure duty is absorbed into the permit: what is regulated is not the form of the marker but the right to publish at all. Article 12 of Federal Decree by Law No. 55 of 2023 Regulating Media brings a natural person who supplies advertising or media content "with or without consideration" on social media inside the licensing perimeter, and Article 5 makes compliance with the media content standards a condition of the permit itself. The second layer is what the content says rather than whether a permit exists: the National Media Authority publishes the content standards alongside the adjacent statutes on rumours and cybercrime and on combating discrimination and hatred. That is criminal, not administrative, exposure, and it is the practical trap for an author writing for a foreign-language market, where subject matter unremarkable in European practice is characterised very differently.

Russia. The regime has run since 1 September 2022: article 18.1 of the Law on Advertising requires the marker "реклама" (advertisement), identification of the advertiser and an erid identifier issued by an advertising data operator, with the data passed into the Unified Register of Internet Advertising (ERIR). The difference is one of principle: disclosure not only informs the audience but creates a record in a state system — every integration becomes a unit of tax and statistical accounting. And it is the technical side that costs the most.

The fine is assessed per publication, not per campaign: an individual with five unlabelled integrations reaches the same 500,000 rubles that a company pays for a single episode. Hence the practice — the contract must expressly allocate who obtains the erid, who files the acts and the allocation data in ERIR, and who carries the risk if the data diverge.

Market access: registers, licences and permits

The second layer is far from universal, and it is the one that separates the models most sharply.

Russia has built the broadest construction. Federal Law No. 303-FZ of 8 August 2024 inserted article 10.6 into Law No. 149-FZ, obliging a social network user whose personal page has an audience above ten thousand people to file identifying information with Roskomnadzor. The procedure is set by Government Decree No. 1963 of 28 December 2024: filing through the Gosuslugi portal or in person, ten working days from the day the threshold is crossed, publication of the application number in the page description within three working days, and verification within seven working days. A Russian citizen supplies full name, telephone numbers and email addresses; a foreign national also gives his country of residence; a legal entity gives its name, corporate form, registration number and representative's details. The register covers the platforms Roskomnadzor has recognised as social networks: Telegram, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, TikTok, YouTube, Rutube, Twitch, Dzen, Likee, Pinterest and others. The scale is industrial: by the end of June 2025 the register held around 149,000 pages, and across 2025 the regulator issued more than 110,000 positive decisions.

The sanction for non-compliance was placed in advertising law: from 1 January 2025 part 10.6 of article 5 of the Law on Advertising prohibits the distribution of advertising on pages that have not filed, and the prohibition runs both ways — the creator answers, and so does the advertiser. In addition, a page outside the register may not be reposted, may not publish payment details or information about donations, and Roskomnadzor may require the platform to restrict access to it. The economics are asymmetric: the creator risks thousands of rubles, the brand hundreds of thousands, so large advertisers strip unregistered channels out of their media plans themselves. The real cost of not filing is not the fine but disappearance from procurement.

Audience is counted per platform, separately: two channels of 8,000 subscribers create no obligation, one channel of 10,001 does; a fall back below the threshold does not deregister the page automatically — removal is a separate application-based procedure. Blocked Instagram and Facebook are outside the register: a page there cannot be registered at all.

The UAE licenses the publication itself rather than the person's audience: the instrument is an individual media permit, not a register with a subscriber threshold. Article 12 of Federal Decree by Law No. 55 of 2023 Regulating Media — published in Official Gazette No. 762 of 31 October 2023 and in force from 1 December 2023 — brings electronic and digital media distributing news or advertising inside the licensing perimeter, and provides for permits to natural persons who supply advertising or media content "with or without consideration, on social media and other modern technical means". The trigger is the character of the material published, not the receipt of money: barter, a free post in exchange for an invitation to a restaurant opening and a fortnight's shoot on location land in the same regime as a paid campaign. The carve-outs in the same article are closed — platforms of federal and local government bodies, platforms of educational institutions, and such others as the regulator may designate. Article 5 sets the general conditions: compliance with the media content standards, no previously suspended or cancelled licence in the applicant's name, and payment of the prescribed fees. The permit is personal — the applicant is the individual, not an agency or a brand; it is filed through the regulator's e-services portal, with three working days stated for processing and completion of the authority's training programme as a condition, and it is not substituted by an employer's corporate media licence.

The administrator changed on 1 January 2026. Federal Decree-Law No. 11 of 2025, issued on 30 September 2025, established the National Media Authority as a federal public authority reporting to the Cabinet; Article 13 substitutes it, across all competences, rights and obligations, for three predecessor bodies — the UAE Media Council, the National Media Office and the Emirates News Agency (WAM) — and Article 16 preserves the subordinate instruments already issued so far as they do not conflict, which is why the 2025 Cabinet resolutions continue to operate without being reissued.

The price is set by Cabinet Resolution No. 41 of 2025 Regarding Media Services Fees, issued on 16 April 2025 and in force from 29 May 2025. Item 60 of Table 1 — the individual's permit to provide advertising or media content on social media and other modern technical means — is AED 1,000 on issuance and AED 1,000 a year on renewal; item 61, the permit for a visiting individual, is AED 500 for each three-month period. Article 5 of the resolution exempts natural persons from the issuance and renewal fee under item 60 for the first three years from the date the permit is issued, the charge becoming payable from the fourth year. That is a personal relief on an individual clock, not the "free period until 31 January 2026" that circulates in the market: a creator who obtains a permit in 2026 pays for the first time in 2029, so there is nothing to gain by waiting.

Sanctions run off Article 23 of Law 55/2023 — a warning; a fine of not less than AED 1,000 and not more than AED 1,000,000, doubled on repetition up to a ceiling of AED 2,000,000; administrative closure for up to six months and permanent closure for unregistered operations; and cancellation of licences, permits and approvals — while Article 24 delegates the classification of violations to the Cabinet. That schedule is Cabinet Resolution No. 42 of 2025 on the table of administrative violations and penalties for acts committed in breach of the media law, published on the legislation portal and gathered in the media legislation section of the NMA site. In Table 1: supplying advertising or media content, for a fee or free of charge, on social media without a permit (item 11) — a written warning for the first breach, AED 20,000 for the second, AED 50,000 for the third, doubling on further repetition; continuing to publish after the permit has expired (item 12) — AED 10,000 for the first breach and AED 20,000 for the second, on the same doubling logic; carrying on media activity with no licence or permit at all (item 1) — AED 10,000 with 30 days to rectify, and AED 40,000 with administrative closure on repetition. As at August 2026 enforcement practice against individual creators is not systematised in open sources.

Spain and Italy maintain not a register of bloggers but a register of audiovisual providers, in which "relevant users" must enrol: in Spain the state register under Ley 13/2022 within two months, in Italy the AGCOM elenco with a deadline of 5 February 2026. The logic is the opposite of the Russian one: the thresholds are tuned to a few hundred professional players rather than a hundred thousand creators. France introduced, in place of a register, a presence requirement: article 9 of loi 2023-451 obliges an influencer established outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland who targets the French public to appoint a representative in the EU and to take out civil liability insurance. The United States and the United Kingdom have no access layer at all — the ASA, the CMA and the FTC work after the event, and licensing exists only in sector verticals, above all the financial one.

Prohibitions by platform and by vertical

Platforms are a uniquely Russian instrument. Federal Law No. 72-FZ of 7 April 2025 added part 10.7 to article 5 of the Law on Advertising, in force from 1 September 2025: it bans advertising on the resources of undesirable organisations, of organisations wound up or banned under anti-extremism and anti-terrorism legislation, and on other resources to which access has been restricted. The effect is that Instagram and Facebook are closed to any advertising at all, blogger integrations included. The earlier Federal Law No. 42-FZ of 11 March 2024 has, since 22 March 2024, banned advertising on the resources of foreign agents and advertising of those resources. No separate offence was written into the Code: the same part 1 of article 14.3 applies, with its 500,000 ruble ceiling. The breach is a continuing one: a post published before 1 September 2025 but left accessible afterwards still counts as distribution of advertising. As early as October 2025 a territorial office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service fined a blogger 30,000 rubles over advertising reels — some episodes under the blocked-network prohibition, others for missing labelling, the trigger being a subscriber's complaint. Telegram and YouTube stand apart: formally they are not designated prohibited resources, and in March 2026 the FAS explained that through the end of 2026 no enforcement measures would be taken over advertising on those platforms. That is a statement of enforcement policy, not a rule of law.

Finance is the fastest-tightening vertical. In the UAE the media permit is not enough once the subject matter is investment, financial instruments or their promotion: the market regulator comes into play, and here too the nameplate has changed — the former Securities and Commodities Authority domain redirects to the Capital Market Authority. As at August 2026 that regulator has published no standalone licensing regime for "financial influencers" carrying its own decision number; the declared line is engagement with the community through responsible financial communication campaigns, including an initiative launched on 20 April 2026 with finfluencers. That is not licence to improvise: investment recommendations and the promotion of funds and brokerage services remain regulated activities, and the financial free zones — the DIFC under the DFSA and ADGM under the FSRA — operate their own financial promotion rules, which as a general matter prohibit distributing such material without a licence or without reliance on a licensed person. A contract to promote a broker or a crypto platform, signed by a UAE-resident creator, therefore needs a separate check on the market regulator's side and not only a media permit. In the United Kingdom FG24/1 of 26 March 2024 states that an unauthorised person promoting a regulated product without approval by an FCA-authorised firm may commit a criminal offence under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. In the United States section 17(b) of the Securities Act 1933 prohibits describing a security for consideration from an issuer, underwriter or dealer without disclosing the fact, source and amount of that consideration — the SEC's run of cases against celebrities promoting crypto-assets is built on it. France goes furthest: article 4 of loi 2023-451 bans the promotion of financial contracts and crypto-assets as such. India requires verification of a creator's qualifications on financial and banking subjects.

Medicine, gambling and children. China requires prior approval for advertising of treatments, medicines, medical devices, health products and specialised infant food, and prohibits advertising to minors across nine categories of goods, including alcohol, cosmetics and games harmful to health. France bans the promotion of aesthetic procedures carrying health risks, of products presented as therapeutic substitutes and of nicotine-containing products, and permits gambling only where age-exclusion mechanisms are engaged and a warning is displayed. Italy extends the general gambling advertising ban to influencers, the DSA prohibits advertising based on profiling using minors' data, and the CONAR guidance requires parental consent where children take part in content directly. Russia works through the general restrictions in articles 24–25 of the Law on Advertising.

Money: taxes, levies and platform reporting

Here Russia has gone further than anyone, while the rest rely on general tax law plus data exchange.

The Russian contour for 2026. Federal Law No. 176-FZ of 12 July 2024 replaced the two-band personal income tax with a five-band scale from 1 January 2025: under article 224 of the Tax Code, 13% up to 2.4 million rubles, 15% to 5 million, 18% to 20 million, 20% to 50 million and 22% above that, the higher rate applying to the excess. Federal Law No. 425-FZ of 28 November 2025 raised the headline VAT rate to 22% from 1 January 2026 and cut the VAT exemption threshold on the simplified regime from 60 to 20 million rubles; the planned further cuts to 15 million in 2027 and 10 million from 2028 were scrapped by Federal Law No. 228-FZ of 4 July 2026, which froze the threshold at 20 million to the end of 2029. Crossing it does not eject the taxpayer from the simplified regime but makes him a VAT payer; the ceiling for the regime itself is around 490 million rubles, and those who cross may apply 5% up to roughly 250 million and 7% above, in each case without deducting input VAT. The professional income tax runs to 31 December 2028 under Law No. 422-FZ of 27 November 2018, at 4% and 6% with a ceiling of 2.4 million rubles — for a creator living off integrations, two or three deals. Since 1 May 2025 the OKVED 2 classifier has carried codes 73.11.1 and 70.21.1 for advertising and information activity by a social network user: the combination of code, ERIR data and bank turnover gives the Federal Tax Service a risk profile without ever asking a platform for anything.

The sector levy is unique. Federal Law No. 479-FZ of 26 December 2024 added article 18.2 to the Law on Advertising: advertising distributors, advertising system operators and persons acting on their instructions pay 3% of quarterly income from the distribution of internet advertising addressed to consumers in Russia. The rule applies from 1 April 2025 and the levy is administered by Roskomnadzor off ERIR data — the tax authority plays no part. The assessment appears in the personal cabinet no later than the 15th day of the second month of the following quarter, with payment due by the 5th day of the third. There is no minimum income threshold: an individual, a self-employed taxpayer, a sole trader and an agency all stand on the same footing. The base depends on the contract: under a services agreement the 3% is computed on the whole sum, under an agency structure only on the intermediary's commission. There is no separate offence for non-payment — arrears are recovered through the courts — but distorting the ERIR data engages part 15 of article 14.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences.

The levy attaches neither to the payment nor to the post but to how the income is recorded in ERIR: a creator who has handed labelling to an agency and never logs into the personal cabinet is the last to learn what his own base is, and has no time left to contest it.

Outside Russia there is no dedicated levy, but two mechanisms make income visible automatically. The first is platform withholding at source: US platforms withhold tax on royalties under the W-8 forms, European ones apply local VAT and withholding rules (for subscription models there is a separate analysis). The second is platform reporting to tax administrations: DAC7 in the EU and the OECD model rules, whose common logic is examined in the note on tax transparency. British practice shows it in action: HMRC sends content creators and online sellers nudge letters — invitations to disclose undeclared income voluntarily, built on data received from platforms. Turkey offered a carrot: article mükerrer 20/B of the Income Tax Law, introduced by Law No. 7338, exempts the income of social content producers from tax where receipts go to a dedicated Turkish account with 15% withheld by the bank and the top band of the scale is not exceeded; Law No. 7491 extended the regime to internet services from 2024.

A separate question is what stays tied to a country after a move. In Russia that is sub-clause 6.3 of clause 1 of article 208 of the Tax Code, in force from 1 January 2025: fees for services supplied over the internet using domains in the .RU, .РФ or .SU zones, or information systems whose technical facilities sit in Russia, count as income from Russian sources where the provider is a Russian tax resident, or the income is credited to a Russian account, or the payer is a Russian company or sole trader. The rates are the same 13–22% regardless of residence, and the Russian client acts as withholding agent. The mechanics of leaving are set out in the note on exiting Russian tax residence, the general plan in relocation from Russia, the choice of structure in the analyses of a creator holding company, PSCs and IR35 and touring income, and bank onboarding in the practice of private-client compliance and the list of unfriendly jurisdictions.

Liability: from a fine to a criminal case

The scale is stretched further than it looks. At the bottom sit the United Kingdom and Brazil, where self-regulation carries no monetary sanction: the ASA publishes its ruling, CONAR requires the advertisement to be taken down. Above that come fixed fines: India up to ₹10 and ₹50 lakh, Spain on a turnover-linked scale — up to €150,000 where income is below €2 million and up to €1.5 million or 3% of income for very serious breaches (articles 157 and 160 of Ley 13/2022). The UAE sits between the fixed and the open-ended: Article 23 of Law 55/2023 fixes a statutory corridor of AED 1,000 to AED 1,000,000, doubled on repetition to a ceiling of AED 2,000,000, with administrative closure for up to six months and permanent closure for unregistered operations, while the concrete amounts for a creator come from the table in Cabinet Resolution No. 42 of 2025 — item 11 runs warning, AED 20,000, AED 50,000. Higher still are turnover-based sanctions: 6% under the DSA, 10% under the DMCC Act. In the United States the cap is formally lower ($53,088 per violation), but violations multiply one by one and are supplemented by consumer redress. France is the only European jurisdiction where non-disclosure of advertising is directly criminal.

Russia occupies the extreme point of the scale, but it gets there not through advertising law: the administrative side is moderate, while the criminal load is generated in the tax contour and built out from there into offences that money cannot close.

The Russian cases: Blinovskaya, Chekalina, Mitroshina, Gasanov

By August 2026 a run of verdicts had settled into a single architecture: a tax audit uncovers business splitting, investigators bolt a laundering charge under article 174.1 of the Criminal Code onto the assessed arrears, and if the money crossed a border, the currency offence under article 193.1 follows.

Elena Blinovskaya: on 3 March 2025 the Savyolovsky District Court imposed five years in a colony under article 198(2), article 174.1(4)(b) and article 187(1) of the Criminal Code, on arrears of 918 million rubles and alleged laundering of 716 million; after partial payments the claim was revised down to 587.6 million. On 13 October 2025 the Moscow City Court cut the term to four years and six months, releasing her on the tax count because the limitation period had run, and on 29 July 2026 the Second Court of Cassation left the verdict standing. The tax episode is an offence of minor gravity with a two-year limitation period, laundering a grave offence with a ten-year one: the process consumes the first and never touches the second.

Valeria Chekalina: the tax case (article 198(2), around 311 million rubles, turnover split across sole traders registered to relatives and staff) was discontinued on 1 March 2024 after about 504 million was paid, together with the accompanying article 174.1 case over 130 million. In October 2024 a third case was opened under article 193.1(3)(a),(b): customers of the marathon paid under an offer naming the Dubai company E-FITNESS-FZCO as seller, 251.6 million rubles in all, and investigators considered the documents given to the banks to contain knowingly false information. Her partner Roman Vishnyak received two and a half years and a 500,000 ruble fine, upheld by the Moscow City Court on 6 May 2026; Artyom Chekalin received seven years in a colony and a fine of about 194.5 million on 13 April 2026; Valeria Chekalina on 31 July 2026 received five years suspended, a fine of 763.5 million rubles and a three-year ban on administering internet pages. The size of the fine follows from the sanction in article 193.1(3), which permits a fine in the amount of the convicted person's income over five years: for someone with a high declared income the "softer" alternative is two orders of magnitude more expensive than the fixed million.

Alexandra Mitroshina: her 2023 tax case, over more than 120 million rubles, was discontinued after payment, but on 7 March 2025 she was detained at Sochi airport on a new one — article 174.1(4)(b), laundering of 115,249,600 rubles through property purchases. On 18 June 2026 the Tverskoy District Court imposed three years suspended, a 900,000 ruble fine and confiscation of assets worth more than 115 million; the prosecution appealed the sentence as unduly lenient. Gusein Gasanov settled arrears of more than 170 million rubles for 2019–2021 together with penalties (around 300 million), left for the UAE in February 2025 and was placed on the wanted list in May; on 4 August 2026 the Presnensky District Court sentenced him in absentia to four years in a colony under article 174.1(4)(b) for laundering more than 68 million rubles, with a 1 million ruble fine and confiscation of premises worth about 46 million. A sentence in absentia under article 247(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure is quashed on cassation under part 7 of the same article once the circumstances fall away: it is an instrument of pressure and a basis for a search notice, not a settled fact.

Comparing the jurisdictions

Questions and answers