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Individuals featured in journalistic investigations are actively trying to “cleanse” Google search results of compromising information. In their efforts, they rely on the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As the independent publication Proekt discovered, PR representatives of Russian oligarchs and high-ranking officials file complaints to Google on behalf of the authors of the “offending” articles.
In their complaints, they assert that the information in the articles was copied from an original source without authorization — and that it is therefore stolen. Moreover, complaints are filed against the publications’ main websites, mirror websites, and resources that republish investigations, including their translations into other languages. In a few cases, the tactic has worked: The Insider can verify that Google removed specific republished materials from its search results.
A large portion of the complaints on Proekt’s list concern content produced by The Insider, including both original investigations and news items. All complaints cite a DMCA violation as the reason.
Some of them are ostensibly submitted personally by Anastasia Kirilenko, a journalist at The Insider and the author of numerous investigations. In reality, however, Kirilenko has not filed any such complaints.
Nevertheless, “Anastasia Kirilenko” demanded that Google stop indexing and and showing in search results a 2018 article titled “Putin's 4 percent: How criminal kingpins with Kremlin connections launder oil money in Monaco” — an investigation by the real-life Anastasia Kirilenko into how mafia bosses with ties to the Kremlin launder money in Monaco and Liechtenstein. The investigation focuses on the criminal proceeds of the Tambovskaya gang and criminal kingpins Ilya Traber and Sergei Vasilyev. In the text, The Insider’s sources state that both figures enjoy President Putin’s special trust and that they have been welcome guests at his birthday parties. Meanwhile, nominal owners in Monaco and Liechtenstein keep up fruitful cooperation with companies owned by Putin's friends, including oligarchs Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Yakunin.
When it comes to fabricated requests for Google to filter access to investigations, The Insider’s “4 percent” article is not an outlier. Complaints have also been filed to remove the following materials from Google search results: