Debts owed by Alphabet’s Google, YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and Telegram, resulting from fines imposed by Russian courts, seem to have been resolved.
Google office building – illustrative photo. Image credit: Jonny Gios via Unsplash, free license
According to Reuters, these companies are no longer listed as debtors in the state bailiffs’ database.
However, X (formerly Twitter) and Twitch still appear in the database, with fines amounting to 51 million roubles ($560,730) and 23 million roubles ($252,879), respectively.
Russia has been in conflicts with international technology companies over perceived illicit content and non-compliance with local data storage regulations, tensions that escalated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
As a result of the invasion, Twitter, Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram were blocked, and YouTube faced particular scrutiny from the Russian government.
In late 2023, a Russian court fined Google 4.6 billion roubles ($50.4 million), calculated based on a percentage of its annual turnover in Russia. Meta, designated as “extremist” in 2022, has also faced fines proportional to its Russian revenue.
Written by Vytautas Valinskas