The Moscow Arbitration Court has declared the Russian legal entity of Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty LLC, bankrupt. This was reported by a TASS correspondent from the court.
In addition, the court decided to open bankruptcy proceedings against the debtor for six months — this is the final stage of the bankruptcy procedure, at which the organization's property is sold to pay off debts.
In early March 2022, the Federal Tax Service demanded that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty LLC be declared bankrupt. It was proposed to do this under a simplified procedure without the monitoring stage, but in August the tax authorities asked to carry out the bankruptcy in the usual way. This was explained by the fact that Radio Liberty has “property that can be used to pay for the bankruptcy procedure.”
The court began bankruptcy proceedings for Radio Liberty in August. According to representatives of the Federal Tax Service, the reason for this was the non-payment of taxes — at that time the company's debt amounted to about seven million rubles. “We believe that the requirements of the tax authority, which were originally stated, the demands for non-payment of taxes only formally served as a reason for going to court, since <…> the inability to pay taxes in full was due solely to the blocking of accounts,” a representative of Radio Liberty commented on the court’s decision.
Since 2021, Radio Liberty has been fined more than a billion rubles. Most of the fines, 988.5 million, were imposed by the courts due to the lack of labeling of the media as a “foreign agent” (Article 19.34.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). Fines for another 75.8 million rubles for refusing to remove materials about the war in Ukraine (Article 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).
Two days after the Federal Tax Service filed a bankruptcy lawsuit against Radio Liberty, and their website blocked for covering the war in Ukraine, the radio station suspended work in Russia. «These attacks by the Kremlin on the ability of RS to operate in Russia are the culmination of a years-long pressure campaign against RS, which has maintained a physical presence in Russia since 1991,» they said.