While researching something else, I found that a Russian court has fined Google for a violation of administrative law. The court’s summary:
Постановлением мирового судьи судебного участка N422 Таганского района города Москвы по делу № 5-29/22 об административном правонарушении, предусмотренном ч.2.1 ст. 13.40 КоАП РФ в отношении организации GOOGLE LLC – GOOGLE LLC признан виновным в совершении административного правонарушения, предусмотренного ч.2.1 ст. 13.40 Кодекса Российской Федерации об административных правонарушениях и ему назначено наказание в виде административного штрафа в размере 4 000 000 руб. 00 коп.
Machine translation by Yandex:
By the decision of the Justice of the peace of the judicial precinct N422 of the Tagansky district of Moscow in case No. 5-29/22 on an administrative offense provided for in Part 2.1 of Article 13.40 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation in relation to the organization GOOGLE LLC – GOOGLE LLC was found guilty of committing an administrative offense provided for in Part 2.1 of Article 13.40 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation and he was sentenced to an administrative fine in the amount of 4,000,000 rubles. 00 kopecks.
Article 13.40 was signed into Russian law in 2018:
The Federal Law supplements Chapter 13 of the Russian Federation Code of Administrative Offences with Article 13.40 establishing administrative liability for failure by search engine operators to perform the requirements stipulated by Russian Federation Law On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection.
The amendments concern the connection of information resources or information and telecommunications networks with restricted access in Russia to the federal state information system; termination of providing information on information resources or information and telecommunication networks with restricted access in Russia to search engine users from Russia; termination of providing information on domain name and URLs of websites with restricted access in Russia to search engine users from Russia following a Moscow City Court decision.
This is not the first time Russia has fined Google over its refusal or failure to delete content that Russia deems illegal. Russia has been increasing the fines on big tech, shifting to a percentage of a firm’s revenues in the country. This fine (equal to $52,240.00) is small compared to recent ones in the millions (although even millions is small change globally for Google).
Following that case, the court issued a decision in a matter involving MyHeritage’s alleged violation of Part 8 of Article 13.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. That provision relates to Russia’s privacy law and the storage and updating of information concerning Russian citizens. Russia updated its law and penalties early in 2021. My Heritage was fined 1,500,000 rubles ($19,617.59).