A Moscow court has fined Airbnb, Twitch, UPS, and Pinterest for not storing Russian user data locally, according to Russian regulator Roskomnadzor.
The
decision was handed down by the Tagansky District Court of Moscow after the four foreign companies allegedly did not provide documents confirming that the storage and processing of Russian personal data was conducted entirely in the country.
Twitch, Pinterest and Airbnb were fined approximately $38,500 while UPS received a fine of roughly $19,200.
According to state-sponsored media
TASS, in at least one case – the one involving Pinterest – company representatives did not even attend the hearing.
If the other companies that were fined didn't show, it could be because they've quit or limited operations in Russia – as have Apple, Dell, HP,
Intel,
SAP, Microsoft,
Nokia and
Ericsson.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has not hidden his disdain for Big Tech, nor his willingness to put pressure on foreign companies. The fines, therefore, are of little surprise.
Russia's Investigative Committee – the nation's peak criminal and anti-corruption investigation body – labelled
Meta an "extremist" organization when it decided to relax rules about exhortations to commit violence on Facebook and Instagram within Ukraine.
Google,
Meta, TikTok and
Twitter have all been fined by Russian courts over both content and data issues since the illegal invasion began.