Russia's Central Bank refuses to replace 100-ruble note showing 'intimate parts' of naked Greek God

© Moscow Times

The 100-ruble bill with a picture of Apollo.

A request to have a naked Greek God removed from Russia's widely used 100-ruble note to protect minors has been turned down by the country's Central Bank, a news report said.

Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Roman Khudyakov had appealed to the bank in July, arguing the depiction of Apollo on the banknote showed "intimate parts of the body" and it should therefore come with an "18+" rating.

But the bank has now told the nationalist lawmaker it will not scrap the bill's image of the Apollo statue from Moscow's Bolshoi Theater portico, Russian newspaper

Izvestia

reported Friday.

In a letter to Khudyakov cited by

Izvestia

, the bank's first deputy chairman Georgy Luntovsky said the image of Apollo used on the note is too small for children to discern specific parts of the deity's anatomy.

Granting the image could be regarded as pornographic, Luntovsky said official complaints could only be filed by the state communication watchdog, Roskomnadzor, not by an individual State Duma deputy.

In his initial complaint, Khudyakov had also argued Apollo's image on the bill is outdated - the 'real' Apollo at the Bolshoi has had his private parts covered by fig leaves ever since the theater's large scale reconstruction was completed in 2012.

As an alternative, Khudyakov proposed using a depiction of a landmark in Sevastopol, a Black Sea port city in the peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March.