According to reports, the Tagansky District Court in Moscow announced today that the Russian State Communications Regulatory Agency, the Federal Agency for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision (Roskomnadzor), has challenged Google An administrative lawsuit filed with Meta (formerly Facebook) may result in fines based on the annual turnover of these two technology companies in Russia.
According to current Russian law, regulators can impose fines ranging from 5% to 10% of their annual turnover on companies that repeatedly violate regulations. But Roskomnadzor threatened Google in October this year, saying that it would seek a fine of 5% to 20% of its annual turnover in Russia, up to a maximum of 240 million U.S. dollars. The reason is that Google has repeatedly failed to delete content deemed illegal, which will be the strongest punishment Russia has imposed on technology companies so far.
Previously, Roskomnadzor had fined Google several times for not deleting illegal content, but the fines were relatively small. Roskomnadzor said on October 19 that Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately US$458,100) so far this year. At the end of last month, Google stated that it had paid Russia a fine of more than 32 million rubles.
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In recent months, Russia has taken a series of measures to strengthen the supervision of American technology companies and restrict access to online information. For this reason, Apple, Google, Twitter and Facebook have all been punished to varying degrees.
Roskomnadzor data shows that so far this year, Facebook has been fined 66 million rubles (approximately US$900,000) by Russia, and Twitter has been fined 38.4 million rubles (approximately US$521,000). The Moscow Tagansky District Court also stated today that the hearing date for both companies is set on December 24. In this regard, Google and Meta have not yet responded to reporters’ requests for comment.