PRESS: Children’s ombudsman wants to ban e-sale of dangerous goods

MOSCOW, Oct 11 (PRIME) -- Russia’s ombudsman for children Anna Kuznetsova has asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to consider going to court to recognize as banned information on marketplaces dealing in dangerous goods for children and consider its further blocking, business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

Kuznetsova referred to the information on the sale of children’s goods with violations of customs rules and potentially dangerous for minors’ health. The resources in question are AliExpress, Pandao, Joom, and Yandex.Market. Blocking will be imposed only on the parts that contain the banned information, an ombudsman spokesperson told the daily.

Prosecutors are expected to respond by the end of October.

President of the Association of Internet Trade Companies (AITC) Artyom Sokolov said the law protects buyers from purchases of dangerous products in Russian online stores, but buyers act on their own risk and peril when they order goods at foreign online stores.

AliExpress’s spokesperson Anton Panteleyev said that all goods offered on the platform are certified in the country of origin. “We constantly watch the quality of goods on the platform, and more than 200,000 sellers, whose products provoked any complaints about quality, have been closed over the recent years on sites of Alibaba (AliExpress’s owner),” he said, adding that AliExpress cooperates with Russian monitoring agencies closely.

Pandao’s owner, Internet company Mail.Ru Group, said that its services trace unreliable sellers and “block eternally those who sell children’s dishware made from melamine.”

Yandex.Market’s spokeswoman Polina Upitis said the company is unaware of any of the cases mentioned by Kuznetsova.

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