Google removes Proekt’s investigations concerning Zhirinovsky and Medvedev’s «wallet» from its search results

At least two texts by Proekt have been removed from Google search results after the release of the investigation into how members of the Russian elite use search engines to scrub their public biographies of unflattering facts.

Details. Links to Proekt’s investigations into the family of the late LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and billionaire Igor Yusufov, the «wallet» of Dmitry Medvedev’s family, have been removed from Google search results.

• How was the article about Zhirinovsky removed? The link to Proekt’s investigation into Zhirinovsky’s family was removed after several complaints (1, 2, 3) against Google claiming violation of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is evidenced by data from Lumen, a service that aggregates complaints against online platforms.
• The complaints allege that a number of websites have published photos and text belonging to the copyright holder without authorization. The website min-pravda.com (blocked by Roskomnadzor on January 10 following a pre-trial blocking decision of December 1) was cited as the «original source» of the text. The «original source» of the photo was listed as therichjerksite.com, as well as the OCCRP website. The latter was also listed as the «copyright infringer» in the same complaint.
• These complaints against Google were filed after Nadezhda Grishaeva, the ex-wife of Zhirinovsky’s son, failed to get Proekt and the OCCRP website (which published the English version) to delete the investigation. In the letters to Google that they’ve been sending since the summer of 2023, the complainants first insisted that they were the authors of Proekt’s article and that the article on the OCCRP website infringed their copyright. Gradually, they found the wording that satisfied Google.
• Article on Yusufov. The removal of the link to Proekt’s investigation about Yusufov was first reported by Verstka. Six other links were removed from Google search results along with it.
• As a result, several dozen links to the original investigation, its copies and several unrelated pages were removed from Google’s search results by January 2025.
• To make Google remove these links, DMCA violation complaints (1, 2) were filed against the company, just as in the case of the Zhirinovsky investigation. These stated that the media had illegally copied content from the OffShore Truth website.
• Vitaly Yusufov sought removal of the investigation since fall 2022. The lawsuit was dismissed, but, as Verstka pointed out, in March the Moscow City Court overturned the initial decision of the Khamovnichesky District Court and obliged Proekt to delete the investigation.
• Another way to get rid of unwanted articles is to reprint independent investigations on other websites with the addition of inaccurate facts, after which the plaintiffs file a lawsuit demanding the removal of these articles. The courts then decide to remove not only the copies, but also the original.

Context. Google removed both pieces from its search results just months after Proekt released its investigation into how Russian businessmen, officials and their family members are seeking to have sensitive information about them removed from the web. Two schemes are being used to scrub the Western search engines. The first is through the DMCA, as described above.

• Such blockings are extremely difficult to appeal against. To challenge the decision to remove a link from the search results, you need to fill out a request form and file it to Google’s tech support. In this form, you must specify the ID of the removed content, which the search engine support is supposed to send to the page owner before removal. However, Proekt did not receive such notifications from Google. The same problem was faced by other Russian independent media, the links to whose articles were also removed from the search results, as their representatives told Agentstvo.
• Nevertheless, Proekt will seek to overturn the decision to remove the links to investigations about Zhirinovsky and Yusufov’s family.

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