The Prosecutor General's Office is investigating domains in the .рф zone.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office held an interdepartmental meeting regarding the registration of domain names in the .РФ zone and the actions of the registrar RU-CENTER, which held closed auctions for the domains. A criminal case will likely be opened after this meeting.

Representatives of the Coordination Center for the .РФ zone claim that the registrar RU-CENTER circumvented the domain registration limit by registering 65,000 names in the first few hours. RU-CENTER sold 25,000 of these, including popular names like magazin.РФ and flowers.РФ, at closed auctions, which is inconsistent with the Coordination Center's approach. RU-CENTER representatives stated that the company did not violate any rules and acted strictly within the law.

Alexander Khinshtein, a member of the commission investigating domain registration abuses, noted that no conclusions have been reached yet, but everyone agrees that RU-CENTER's actions are outrageous. He anticipates a criminal case, but the specific offense is unclear. He suggested Article 165 of the Russian Criminal Code ("causing property damage by deception or abuse of trust") could be the likely culprit.

As a reminder, domain registration in the .рф zone began on November 11, 2010. It was later discovered that many domains RU-CENTER had registered for its clients were actually registered to the registrar. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) deemed the company to be involved in collusion, and on November 24, all of its .РФ domains were blocked. A short time later, the Coordination Center and RU-CENTER reached an agreement, and the block was lifted.