Europe 1 with AFP 2:46 p.m., December 24, 2021
Russia has just ordered the American company Google to pay a fine of 7.2 billion rubles, or 87 million euros.
A record amount for a company, which the country led by Vladimir Putin justifies by not having removed content deemed banned by the Kremlin.
Russia has fined Google a record 87 million euros for failing to remove "banned" content, a sign of growing pressure in the country against the digital giants.
In recent years, the Russian authorities have continued to tighten their control over the internet, the last space where critical voices of the Kremlin can still speak with relative freedom.
They regularly sanction large digital companies, especially foreign ones, accused of not erasing content condoning drugs, suicide and linked to the opposition.
The fine of 7.2 billion rubles (87 million euros at the current rate) imposed by Google is, however, unprecedented in terms of its amount.
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In a statement on Telegram, the press service of the courts of Moscow indicated that the Californian giant had been convicted of "recidivism", because it did not remove from its platforms content considered illegal.
The court did not specify, however, what content it was.
"We will study the court documents and then decide on the measures to be adopted," Google's press service said, without further comment.
This fine could be followed by another during the day against Meta (Facebook's parent company), another digital heavyweight, tried by the same Moscow court.
Last October, the Russian telecoms gendarme, Roskomnadzor, threatened Meta with fines of up to "between 5% and 10% of the annual turnover" of its subsidiary in Russia, or hundreds of millions of euros .