A fine worth more than global GDP. The Russian prosecutor’s office on Tuesday, October 29, ordered the American web giant to pay a fine of two “undecillion” rubles for having deleted Russian state accounts and pro-government accounts from YouTube. A stratospheric sum since it is equivalent to 20 billion million billion dollars, and has no less than 36 digits.
Figures that are dizzying for this fine, the amount of which is far greater than world GDP, estimated at 110,000 billion dollars by the International Monetary Fund, as recalled Sky News. If the sanction is so high, it is because the American giant is accused by the Russian justice system of not having followed its injunction in the summer of 2024 requiring it to restore numerous business channels and 17 Russian media outlets on YouTube . If it was “only” 100,000 rubles initially, the amount has doubled every week since, until reaching this pharaonic sum.
An amount that can still increase
A sum which Google will obviously not be able to pay, especially since if the fine is not paid within nine months, it will be doubled every day that follows, and this amount will not be limited, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
According to Roman Yankovsky, an expert from the HSE Education Institute cited by the Russian news agency, Google will not seek to pay it and “the Russian Federation will not be able to recover this money from the company “, it is therefore above all a political sanction. “Russian courts deliberately took such a provocative and unprecedented decision in order to position themselves politically in relation to internet platforms,” explains Fyodor Kravchenko of the Collegium of Media Lawyers to the business media Kommersant.
Especially since even if Google intended to pay, the company would find itself in difficulty in the face of American sanctions which prevent the country’s companies from doing business with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, as recalled BFMTV. On the other hand, according to some reports, Google will only be able to return to the Russian market if it complies with the court’s decision.
