The court fined Google 4.6 billion rubles for refusing to remove videos about war and LGBT from YouTube

The Tagansky District Court of Moscow fined Google 4 billion 611 million rubles for refusing to remove content at the request of Roskomnadzor. this . reported Court representatives

As a TASS correspondent reports from the meeting room, the protocol was drawn up because of a video on YouTube about the war in Ukraine, including about “the losses of the Russian army during the Northern Military District, civilian casualties and plans to use nuclear weapons.” The claims also related to queer content and videos that, according to Roskomnadzor, were “extremist.”

The size of the fine was tied to Google's annual turnover in Russia. This is the third fine against the corporation for refusing to moderate content at the request of the Russian authorities (Part 5 of Article 13.41 of the Administrative Code). In December 2021, the fine amounted to 7.2 billion rubles, and in July 2022 - 21.7 billion. The Antimonopoly Service then fined them 2 billion rubles for “unpredictable” blocking of Russian pro-government accounts on YouTube.

Bailiffs, at the request of the courts, began to block money in the accounts of the Russian representative office of Google as part of claims by Russian television channels due to blocking on YouTube, including Tsargrad, Russia Today and NTV. As a result, in May 2022, the Russian legal entity Google began bankruptcy proceedings. The court declared them bankrupt in October 2023 and introduced bankruptcy proceedings there. According to the bankruptcy trustee of the company, Valery Talyarovsky, the total debt, including to creditors, amounted to 53.6 billion rubles.