The Criminal Code demands the return of 366 million rubles for the disputed .рф domains.
At an unscheduled council meeting, the Coordination Center for the National Domain Name System (NTDN) proposed two options for addressing violations of domain name registration rules in the .РФ zone. Both options, which involve returning the proceeds earned at Ru-Center auctions to buyers, were proposed by Coordination Center Director Andrey Kolesnikov.
The first option involves canceling the registration of the disputed domains and placing them in quarantine, meaning no one will be able to register them. The seized domains are proposed to be put up for sale no earlier than November 11, 2011.
The second option would change the domain administrator's information in the unified registry from Ru-Center to the actual owner—the auction winner. The winning bidders would be refunded, and instead, users would be required to pay the standard domain name price (600 rubles for Ru-Center).
The Coordination Center's press service stated that the board members agreed that the Coordination Center Director has all the necessary powers to operate within the existing regulations. The statement also stated that an unscheduled inspection of RU-Center began on February 28 in response to user complaints.
As a reminder, at the start of domain name registration in the Cyrillic .РФ zone, the CC created a special commission, which discovered that RU-Center had reserved over 60,000 domains for itself within the first hours of open registration.
The Commission believes that RU-Center recruited other market participants to overcome established quotas. RU-Center is accused of selling approximately 25,000 of the most popular domains (such as store.RF, flowers.RF, and others) at closed auctions, in violation of registration rules.
The Coordination Center discovered irregularities in the domain registration process almost immediately after registration began. Coordination Center representatives suspected that many domains were being resold at closed auctions. Moreover, they were selling at auctions for much more than their cost.
As a result, administrative cases were brought against many registrars. The FAS then focused on Regional Network Information Center CJSC, Regional Network Information Center ANO, Relcom.Business Network LLC, Demos-Internet CJSC, Registrar CJSC, and Elvis-Telecom CJSC. On February 14, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office announced it would conduct an investigation of RU-Center.
