Google has had a difficult year in Russia, but it is now fighting back with a lawsuit that seeks to get the government to pay billions of roubles.
Most Western businesses, including Google, have left Russia as a result of Vladimir Putin’s conflict with Ukraine. However, after Russian authorities confiscated Google’s bank account and effectively stopped business operations there, the corporation was forced to declare for bankruptcy and was also slammed with a $370 million fine for disseminating “false” information about the war.
Google has had 7.7 billion roubles ($127 million) confiscated as Reuters reports (Opens in a new window) . The YouTube-blocked Russian Orthodox TV station Tsargrad claimed that bailiffs had taken 1 billion roubles (about $16 million) from Google as compensation for the channel’s blocking.
It appears that the goal of this court action is to recover at least a portion of the money that was taken. Google has not yet made any public statements regarding the complaint, but according to court records obtained by Reuters, the Moscow Arbitration Court accepted the case on September 30.
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The Federal Bailiffs Service of Russia and a senior employee are named as defendants in the court documents. Given that the same arbitration court denied Google’s claim to release the seized roubles from the Tsargrad case in August, it seems unlikely that the outcome will be favorable for Google. They were trying, and you can’t really condemn them for making the Russian authorities angry.
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