Sberbank blocked $300,000 stolen by hackers from the Bank of America and transfered to Russia. The major Russian bank says it would return money after BoA completes formal procedures with Russian security services. According to BoA, hackers got access to their client's computer and transfered about a million dollars in 11 separate operations on May,14 to other banks. Two of these operations lead to a Sberbank account in Volgograd via few other banks. The owner of this account tried to encash $300,000 on May,29 but failed because the account was blocked.

Russian IT exports could reach $12,5 bln by 2010 if government supports developers with fiscal benefits, Russia's minister for information and communication Leonid Reiman beleives.

This figure only arrived at $1,5 bln in 2006. Without governmental initiative towards exporters the growth would be two times slower, according to Reiman. Developers insist that building technoparks and financing IT programs from federal budget is not enough to push exports. They look forward to tax remissions of which president Putin spoke in the beginning of 2005 still never happened.

Last year women brands spent $1,5 mln on online ads in Russia, according to MindShare Interaction recent report. The main portion (37%) of these spents comes from makeup brands headed by Oriflame and Avon. They are followed by haircare (25%) and body treatment (16%) products, mostly Unilever's. Fashion brands are still very few on the web in Russia, local ones ahead. Dmitry Ashmanov from MindShare says this expends to double in 2007, although online promotion takes only 1% of woman brands' media budgets in Russia.

Swedish Kontakt East Holding (KEH) plans to enter Russian online shopping market, in addition to its Yellow Pages Russia directory service. The company will spend up to $13 mln to launch an online auction. According to KEH's CEO Filip Engelbert they wouldn't buy any existing business, like Molotok.ru, for it's too expensive, $3-5 mln. Last year Russian online stores earned $2,5 bln which showing 150% year growth. The segment chosen by KEH seems weird though, for Internet users in Russia never showed much enthusiasm about auctioning online. Only 13% of them have ever tried it, according to recent Gemius study.

One of Moscow's city courts satisfied a non-resident company's claim for its right for a domain name in .RU which spells the same as the company's name. We know many cases when domain names were legally returned to the trademark owners, but this is the first story about the plain word name. Anton Sergo, the head of Moscow lawyer company "Internet and Law" who shared this information, didn't disclose the name of the company. "But you can imagine the company called, for instance, Dandelion Inc, which now can legally grab the domain name Dandelion.ru from its owner", the lawyer explained. He admits this case can start a whole new revision of Russian domain market, although formally Russian law-court system does not support precedent model. Besides, the new edition of Civil Code part IV prohibits the registration of trademarks similar to the domain names already registered - but this law comes into force in Jan 2008 only.

About 9 mln Ukrainians are active internet users, according to TNS Ukraine report. Each of them costs about $1 with about $7 mln spent on online ads in Ukraine last year, to double in 2007. By 2010 this figure will arrive at the rate of radio ad spents, Meta.UA experts say. The burst of Ukrainan Web attracts investors who were raising Russian online market before. Russian Funds and Digital Sky Technologies are holding the major share of Meta.UA, last week Finance.UA was acquired by them too.

In June Finam Management will offer equity stakes of Finam-IT mutual fund of high risk (venture) investments in the sector of Innovative and Growth Companies on MICEX. The formation of Finam-IT mutual fund was launched on Dec 27, 2005 and completed on Feb 28, 2006. Its asset value amounts to Rub 175 mln ($6.22 mln). Fund's basic asset is 68,5% shares of Mamba (a dating web-service). With this IPO Finam hopes to attract Rub 500 mln investment.

"Purchasing equity stakes of Finam-IT mutual fund looks attractive first and foremost because of its unique status – the Russian stock market virtually offers no options for portfolio investors to invest cash in IT and hi-tech projects, - Finam analysts say, - Taking part in projects is possible only with relatively big amounts and only after lengthy negotiations are completed. The Russian IT market itself is in an embryonic state and we believe that in the future due to a sharp rise in the number of personal computers among households and a higher penetration rate of broadband technologies information transfer and data processing services will enjoy stronger demand'.

Allofmp3.com press-service says Russian online music store has nothing to do with a britishman arrested yesterday in London, claimed to be "Allofmp3.com representative in Europe" by Western media.

'To our great surprise we learned from BBC news that a 25 year old male was a staff member of our European office', they say in the release, 'He was arrested yesterday, for selling vauchers to purchase music on Allofmp3.com, according to IFPI and BPI'.

The company with a long history of prosecution for copyright infringement (with little success though) says it works absolutely legally in terms of Russian law and keeps no business activites outside the Russian borders.

Further in the statement Allofmp3.com accuses IFPI of making up stories 'to attract attention to its business which looses any rational basis from day to day'. 'They caught a frauder selling gift certificates, invented this never-existed Allofmp3 headquarters and than promoted a brilliant operation of shutting down this evil haven. A young britishman fell a victim to majors fighting technical progress', Russian company concludes.

On May,7 Aleksandr Ponosov was found guilty of Microsoft's copyright infringement by using unlicensed Windows copies on school PCs. The court evaluated Microsoft's loss at 266,000 rubles and sentenced Ponosov to 5,000 rubles penalty, although the company had no money claims to the convict and said it would be satisfied with his public apology. Earlier the court below shut down the case relying on its 'insignificance'. Now Ponosov has lodged another appeal against the final decision claiming he's not guilty and would fight till it's possible.

Police of Altaisky region in assistance with INTERPOL arrested a group of porn distributors. Three Barnaul residents are accused of producing and distributing materials with pornographic images of minors. They downloaded video from foreign websites, ripped CDs and distributed porn by mail. They accepted payments via postal orders, WebMoney and mobile phone accounts. Police say this group provided half of childporn distributed in Russia, though they only earned 100,000 rubles in two years.