Court upholds second turnover fine for Google

MOSCOW, 9 Sep — PRIME. The Tagansky Court of Moscow on Friday upheld the second negotiable fine of 21.7 billion rubles imposed on Google for failing to remove fakes about the Russian army during a special operation in Ukraine, RIA Novosti was told in the press service of the court.

“The Tagansky District Court of Moscow upheld the decision of the justice of the peace dated July 18 against Google,” the agency’s interlocutor said.

The total amount of the fine under part 5 of Article 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation is 21 billion 770 million 392 thousand 317 rubles, or 10% of the company’s annual revenue in the Russian Federation.

This is the second turnover fine for the IT giant – at the end of December, an American corporation was the first in Russia to receive a turnover fine of 7.22 billion rubles for “repeated violation of the procedure for restricting access to illegal content.” This penalty has already been collected.

The reason for bringing the company to administrative responsibility in the second case, as noted in Roskomnadzor, was the materials posted on the YouTube video hosting owned by Google.

According to the department, hosting “purposefully contributes to the dissemination” of: unreliable information about the course of a special military operation in Ukraine; materials promoting extremist views and the ideology of terrorist organizations, “as well as instructions for the manufacture of explosives.”

In addition, the video hosting site, as stated by Roskomnadzor, contains materials promoting “an indifferent attitude to the life and health of minors,” as well as content calling for participation in unauthorized mass rallies.

Roskomnadzor noted to RIA Novosti that the materials given in the protocol are a small part of the content prohibited in Russia that has not been removed by the hosting administration.