The court orders Google to restore Tsargrad’s YouTube account

On April 13, the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the claim of Tsargrad against Google, deciding that the YouTube account of the TV channel, blocked due to U.S. sanctions, must be restored and its owner must get back the funds lost for monetizing the content, Valery Rukobratsky, press secretary of the media’s owner, Konstantin Malofeev, told Interfax.

As Dmitry Magonya, the Managing Partner of ART DE LEX, who represented the interests of Malofeev, told Interfax, the arbitration court ruled the blocking of Tsargrad’s YouTube channel and the termination of the channel monetization contract illegal.

According to Magonya, the case is a precedent both for Russia and globally. “For the first time, a Russian court obliged a resident company of a sanctioning country to perform a contract that it refused to perform because of the sanctions. In other words, the court found the sanctions to be contrary to the public policy of the Russian Federation in relation to the conduct of a foreign company,” explained the lawyer. 

In addition, he noted, it is for the first time that the court rules on the merits on the basis of a new rule - Article 248.1 of the APC (exclusive competence of arbitration courts of the Russian Federation in disputes involving persons subject to restrictive measures), which was introduced by the law of June 8, 2020. 

More details: https://www.interfax.ru/russia/761086