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British Company Sues Owner Of Popular Russian Website


MOSCOW -- A British company is suing one of the most successful web entrepreneurs in Russia.

Albert Popkov is the creator of odnoklassniki.ru (classmates), a very popular social-networking website with more than 25 million registered users throughout the former Soviet Union.

But the CEO of the London-based company i-CD, Alistair Crawford, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that Popkov developed odnoklassniki.ru while working for i-CD.

Crawford says Popkov launched odnoklassniki.ru just 16 days after he left i-CD in 2006. He claims that Popkov stole the idea from another project that i-CD worked on, and that this is illegal. He is asking that odnoklassniki.ru be awarded to i-CD.

Odnoklassniki.ru is estimated by analysts to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.

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