The lower house of the Russian parliament will remove the custodial sentence provision from a defamation bill later this week, the head of the Duma Civil, Criminal, Arbitral and Procedural Law Committee said on Thursday.
The Duma approved the defamation bill in its first reading on Wednesday and it is expected to be passed before the weekend.
“The bill will be significantly amended,” Pavel Krasheninnikov said. “There will be no custodial sentence.”
“That is to say, there will be fines and community work,” he added.
The maximum possible fine will be 5 million rubles ($162,000), Krasheninnikov said.
President Vladimir Putin recently said the defamation statute should be reinstated in the Criminal Code.
The Russian Code of Administrative Offenses currently stipulates fines of just 2,000 to 3,000 rubles for defamation.
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