Ru-Center was fined 239 million rubles.

The Moscow Arbitration Court of Appeal ordered ZAO RSIC (the registrar of Ru-Center) to return 239 million rubles in illegally obtained income to the state budget.

The court upheld previous decisions that the registrar companies' actions violated the Law on Protection of Competition.

As a reminder, in the summer of 2011, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia found several registrars, including Ru-Center, guilty of violating the Federal Law "On the Protection of Competition." The registrars were also required to transfer more than 239 million rubles in illegally obtained income from their actions to the Russian budget.

The lawsuit stems from the actions of Ru-Center and other registrars during the open registration period for domains in the .РФ domain zone. At that time, Ru-Center registered over 70,000 domains and imposed unfavorable or unrelated terms on its clients.

According to the rules of the Coordination Center for TLD RU, a single registrar could register no more than 4,800 domains per hour. ZAO RSIC circumvented this limitation by entering into client agreements with several other registrars, who registered domain names with ZAO RSIC as the administrator.