Russian state channels turned to South African courts to collect a fine from Google

In June, South Africa’s High Court seized the assets of a US company in the country due to the blocking of the Russian Spas channel. Now the tech giant is challenging this decision, Bloomberg noted.

The day before, on October 29, an RBC source reported that the total amount of claims by Russian channels against Google had increased to 2 undecillion rubles (this figure contains 36 zeros). A Russian court fined the company for refusing to restore media accounts on YouTube, which it owns. The affected parties in the case are Zvezda, Channel One, VGTRK, NTV and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

Until Google unlocks the accounts of Russian YouTube channels, the fine will double weekly with no limit on the total amount, so the initial fine of around $1,000 could ultimately exceed the market value of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) of $1 billion, writes Bloomberg.

The agency noted that the claims of Russian channels against the American technology giant could create a tendency for cases to be heard in neutral countries and influence the decisions of other transnational companies to completely reject commercial cooperation with Russia or accept its conditions. to do business. In addition to South Africa, Russian media also filed lawsuits against Google in the courts of Türkiye, Hungary and Spain, RBC wrote.

In June 2022, Google LLC, a Russian subsidiary of an American company, declared bankruptcy due to debts amounting to 19 billion rubles. In October 2023, the court declared the company bankrupt. In October 2024, Google LLC bankruptcy trustee Valery Talyarovsky asked the court to invalidate payments to Ireland’s Google Ireland Limited.