Removing defamatory content

What is happening

An article on a small news site or a Telegram channel: a headline hinting at fraud, and "according to sources" in the text. A week later the aggregators have picked it up, and it appears on the first page of results for the company's name.

A former partner or a dismissed employee runs a blog and writes regularly about "schemes" inside the company, posting fragments of documents. No single post amounts to much, but together they build a picture that later gets repeated to the bank and to counterparties.

The material is long out of date: the inspection came to nothing and the claim against the company was dismissed, yet the piece about "allegations" is still up with no update. The author ignores letters, and the site gives no clear indication of who owns it.

What the law says

• Article 152 of the Civil Code protects a company's business reputation against the dissemination of untrue and damaging information. Where such information is available online, the company may demand its removal and a retraction.
• Only verifiable statements of fact can be challenged. Opinions, value judgements and emotional remarks are not subject to retraction under that article, which is why the work always starts with a line-by-line analysis of the text.
• The company must show that the information was disseminated and that it is damaging; the person who disseminated it must prove that it is true. Without proper evidence of the publication, the first part cannot be proved at all.
• Where the person responsible cannot be identified, as with an anonymous channel or a site with no imprint, the Civil Code allows an application to court for a declaration that the information is untrue. That decision is then served on the platform.
• The director, as a private individual, may ask a search engine to stop showing links to inaccurate or outdated information about them, under the Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection". The mechanism does not extend to the company itself.

What we do

• We arrange a notarial inspection of the pages and of any copies before they can be edited or deleted.
• We go through the text line by line: what is a statement of fact, what is opinion, and what the company's own documents can disprove.
• We identify who can take the material down: the author, the editor, the site or channel administrator, the domain registrar or the hosting provider.
• We prepare reasoned demands for removal and retraction, with supporting documents attached, and send them through the channels the particular platform accepts.
• We track reprints and copies and send demands to each of them, not just to the original source.
• Where the director is named personally, we prepare their requests to search engines to delist the links.
• Once the pre-trial route is exhausted, we assemble the material for a claim or for an application to declare the information untrue.

What we will need from you

• Links to every publication and screenshots, including earlier versions of the text if you kept them.
• Documents that disprove specific statements: court decisions, inspection reports, contracts, statements, correspondence.
• What you know about the likely source: a dispute with a former partner, employee, competitor or client.
• How the publication has affected you: questions from counterparties, a refusal by a bank, stalled negotiations, with documents where available.
• A power of attorney for the company and, where the director is named, a personal one from them as well.