A Moscow court has seized property and frozen the bank accounts of Russian subsidiary Google. These actions have been taken as a guarantee against a possible court decision after the lawsuit was filed by this American company against a sub-branch of the Gazprom-Media company.
The Moscow City Arbitration Court said on April 26 that it had decided six days ago to take over Google assets, which are worth about 500 million rubles ($ 6.6 million).
Gazprom media outlet GPM Entertainment TV is suing Google for refusing to regain access to the company’s YouTube channel. The company is also seeking financial compensation for the damages and is seeking to regain access to its YouTube account.
In early March, a few days after the start of the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Google blocked the YouTube channels of several Russian-funded media outlets in Europe and disabled the Russian bloggers’ monetization program, including YouTube.
The president of Google for Global Affairs, Kent Walker, had stated at the time about the blocking of the channels that “in this extraordinary crisis they are taking extraordinary measures to stop the spread of misinformation and to prevent online misinformation campaigns”.
