Vladimir Putin has seized $100 million from Google to fuel his war against Ukraine, leading to the Russian office of Google to have to declare bankruptcy.
New documents show that Russian authorities took the money out of the bank account of Google’s Russian offices in 2022. The branch soon declared bankruptcy, according to The Telegraph.
Government officials used the ill-gotten cash to help pay for anti-Ukraine propaganda created by the Russia-controlled media outlets Russia Today and Tsargrad TV.
Russian authorities maintained that the seizure was payment for Google having deleted Russian accounts and for the search giant’s act of blocking Russian propaganda outlets.
Google is suing Russia and trying to head off Russian authorities who want to confiscate Google’s cash in countries friendly to Russia, including South Africa, Turkey, and Serbia.
In its court filings, Google said that Russian courts had “levied unprecedented fines and arbitrary legal penalties against Google in an attempt to limit access to information on our services and as a punishment for our compliance with international sanctions against Russian individuals and organizations.”
Well, Google… if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
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