A court in Barnaul on August 24 ruled that the site of the iHerb online store was posting information prohibited in Russia on its pages. When the court decision comes into force, Roskomnadzor will be obliged to block access to the marketplace. Previously, the company planned to spend 1.5 billion rubles to register its dietary supplements and vitamins in order to avoid blocking.
The claim to the online store was filed by the Altai regional public organization of consumers “People's Control”, a source told the newspaper Vedomosti.
The organization's executive director, Nikolai Yakushev, indicated in a statement that the iHerb website contains more than 2,000 items that violate Russian laws. In his opinion, the store sells goods containing narcotic and psychotropic substances, homeopathic medicines under the guise of dietary supplements without registration certificates, as well as sports nutrition, the import of which is prohibited without the permission of the Ministry of Sports.
IHerb blocking
The Russian authorities have frozen access to iHerb several times. In 2016, the court ruled to block the website of a store in Russia for selling sanctioned goods, and in 2019 to remove the application due to several uncertified dietary supplements and food additives. In both cases, the decisions had to be reversed.
In January 2020, the court again demanded the removal of the iHerb mobile application for Russian users. The reason for this decision was “posting information about unsafe dietary supplements”, including for children. In February 2021, the Supreme Court upheld iHerb's lockdown.
In June, iHerb announced that it would spend 1.5 billion rubles on registering its dietary supplements in Russia to avoid blocking. Oksana Bogatenko, Development Director of the iHerb Representative Office in Russia, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Form (SPIEF-2021) that the company decided to localize production and was looking for a region where it would be better to locate the enterprise.
Photo: depositphotos.com/Casimiro_PT
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