The news agency Sputnik News has entered into a forced liquidation procedure in France, following the ban on Russian state media decided by the European Union after the start of the offensive against Ukraine, as reported on Wednesday by the leader of the French entity. the AFP.
The judicial liquidation was pronounced on May 4 and may last until 2024, its president Vladimir Morozov told AFP, confirming information from the World. The 27 employees of the company in France, whose salary was covered by the salary guarantee scheme, were dismissed shortly after this ruling.
The economic model of Sputnik News, an online media outlet launched in 2014, relied entirely on a single Russian client affiliated with the Kremlin, the Rossia Segodnia organization, which commissioned topics and reports from it, company trustee Christophe Basse told AFP. . , appointed by the court.
Instruments of “disinformation”
Accused of being instruments of “disinformation” by Moscow, the Russian state media RT and Sputnik were expelled from the European Union after the start of the Russian offensive against Ukraine. On March 2, a ban on television and the Internet came into effect.
Rossia Segodnia terminated her contract in April and Sputnik was then briefly placed in judicial safeguard proceedings, which later turned into liquidation.
The company leaves around 500,000 euros in liabilities, between social and fiscal debts. “There are about half this amount in Russia,” Basse said, but attempts to recover them have so far been unsuccessful.
RT France continues
The news channel RT France, on the other hand, continues to broadcast in French and publish articles on its site, which can be accessed through a virtual private network (VPN), a service that allows you to surf the web by circumventing blocking. .
In March, the head of RT France accused the French bank Société Générale of having blocked the bank accounts of certain Russian employees in France. The bank had stressed that it did not block “the accounts of its clients based on the sole criterion of nationality”, but that it had to carry out controls on some of them because of the sanctions.
Source: BFM TV
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