“Yandex” was fined 2 million rubles for refusing to provide data to the FSB

The Magistrate’s Court in Moscow fined “Yandex” two million rubles for not providing the FSB with information about users of the “Yandex.Uslugy” service. This is reported by TASS. It is not specified what data the special service requested.

The company was accused of failure by the organizer of the dissemination of information to ensure the implementation of requirements for its equipment and programs for conducting searches by state bodies or organizing state security, a representative of the court told the agency.

In court, “Yandex” admitted the violation, but asked not to assign the maximum amount of the fine. The punishment includes a fine from two to six million rubles.

This violation was repeated for “Yandex”. The first fine in the amount of 400,000 rubles under the article on non-fulfillment of obligations was imposed on the company by the Meshchansky court in 2022, but this case was not previously reported.

Then the representative of “Yandex” explained that the company had no intention to violate the law, but it could not fulfill his requirements because of the sanctions introduced against Russia for the military invasion of Ukraine. Collecting and storing user data requires foreign equipment and software, which cannot be purchased and installed at the moment. Yandex’s lawyer presented the same arguments for the second time, but the court did not listen to them.

The court ruling against Yandex was appealed and entered into legal force.