Google Has To Pay 21 bln Rubles ($0.36 bln) To Russia

While the Western (and not only) big companies are either leaving Russia or thinking of how to sell their entities to other firms, Russia wages war on almost all of them. For instance, Putin’s Russia has already fined Google billions of rubles. And today, the Tagansky District Court decided to recover 21 billion rubles ($0.36 billion) from the American corporation in the form of a turnover fine. The Court thinks Google is guilty of an administrative offense.

Russia Is Chasing The American Corporation

Well, let’s get into details. Google was accused of repeatedly failing to remove information prohibited in Russia. For legal entities, it implies liability in the form of a turnover fine in the amount of 1/20 to 1/10 of the income for the previous year.

Thus, this is already the second fine for Google in Russia over the past year. As we recalled above, in December 2021, the same court ruled to recover about 7.2 billion rubles ($0.12 billion) from a corporation in Russia. fine. In the future, Google challenged this decision, but it remained in force in the appellate instance. Google has fully recovered this fine.

In June this year, Roskomnadzor announced the drafting of a new protocol under the same article against an American corporation. This time, it was prosecuted for repeatedly not deleting materials on YouTube. In it, the authorities revealed “inaccurate information about the course of a special military operation in Ukraine that discredits the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”. Plus, Roskomnadzor was thinking that Google propagandizes extremism.

Many think this is an obvious demonstration of how Putin’s Russia refers to the freedom of speech. But honestly, there have been cases when users were wishing death to Putin on Facebook, and this American corporation didn’t do anything.

Anyway, that’s not a secret that currently, the giant tech companies depend on the US government policy. No matter what you think about it, we have what we have. But if this could help to save lives in Ukraine (and not only), why not?