MOSCOW, October 26 - RAPSI, Dmitry Shchitov. An appeals court has agreed to hear behind closed doors an appeal filed by the Megafon mobile operator against the lower-court's judgment, the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) reports from the courtroom.

Megafon appealed the Moscow Commercial Court's August 30 decision to fine it $1,000 for administrative violations related to the leak of text messages from its website.

Megafon appealed for a private hearing as issues related to the commercial confidentiality and correspondence privacy may be discussed in the trial. The court held for the phone operator's request and asked journalists to leave the room until the court passes its judgment in the case.

The Federal Service for Supervision in Telecom, IT and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) filed the suit after searches on Russia's leading Internet search engine yielded access to thousands of text messages sent from Megafon's website in mid July. Both the content of the messages and the numbers to which they were sent were made available on the search engine.