Google Defendants Asked to Remove ов21 Billion Fines from Subsidy Claim

Defendants in the bankruptcy case of Google LLC on October 16 asked the court in Moscow to exclude administrative fines and court penalties from the scope of subsidiary liability, RBC reports from the courtroom.

In this case, seven defendants: three foreign structures of Google — Google LLC (the parent company of the Alphabet holding), Google International LLC (the owner of the Russian “daughter”) and Google Ireland Limited (the Irish operating hub), as well as four former top managers of Google LLC, including ex-CEO Yulia Solovyova and ex-financier Yulia Ramazanova.

This dispute began in 2022, when Google blocked YouTube channels of a number of Russian media. TV channels went to court, and the courts obliged the company to restore access, appointing a penalty for non-execution - astrente.

Its size was 100 thousand rubles a day with a weekly doubling. During the non-fulfillment, the amount increased to astronomical values - the requirements of TV channels to Google LLC eventually exceeded 91 quintillion rubles. (number with twenty zeros).

In parallel, Roskomnadzor charged revolving fines for failure to remove prohibited content. Some of these fines through the Federal Tax Service were included in the register of creditors’ claims of Google LLC, which was declared bankrupt in the autumn of 2023.

These fines of more than 21 billion rubles. and became the subject of dispute. At the same time, the general register of creditors’ claims is about 22 billion rubles.

In October 2024, the bankruptcy manager Valery Talyarovsky filed a lawsuit for subsidiary liability – that is, he demanded that the company’s debts be repaid not from its empty assets, but from the property of those who managed the asset.

The defendants at the trial stated that it is impossible to include fines in subsidiary liability because of the position of the Constitutional Court. In 2023, the Constitutional Court ruled that tax fines of an organization cannot be collected from its controlling persons as part of subsidiary liability.

A fine is a punitive sanction, not compensation for damage to creditors, so it should not be passed on to other people. Representatives of the defendants insist that the same applies to administrative fines.

“The Constitutional Court states that the distinction between tax and administrative offences does not alter the nature of the amounts recovered. In all cases, we are talking about a punitive sanction, and not about compensation for harm, so any fines are subject to exclusion from the amount of subsidiary liability, the representative of the defendant said.

He recalled that in May 2026, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District had already applied this logic to an administrative fine, excluding the antimonopoly fine from subsidiary liability in another bankruptcy case.

In its ruling of May 28, 2026, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District said that this clarification of the Constitutional Court should be carried out broadly. And, accordingly, antimonopoly fines imposed on the debtor cannot also be part of subsidiary liability, he added.

If we subtract from the claims all public legal obligations — fines of the Federal Tax Service and court penalties — then, according to a representative of one of the defendants, “there remains quite a bit: “The remaining claims, except for all these public claims, amount to 1.5 billion rubles — claims of ordinary creditors.”.

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