Google’s Russian subsidiary plans to file for bankruptcy after authorities in the country seized its bank account following a series of clashes between Moscow and the US tech giant.
“[The seizure] has made it untenable for our Russia office to function, including employing and paying Russian-based employees, paying suppliers and vendors and meeting other financial obligations,” Google told the Financial Times.
The company said it would continue to provide free services, including search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Android and Play, to users in Russia.
The company’s shutdown of most commercial operations followed President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Google-owned YouTube also blocked Russian state-backed media channels after initially preventing them from advertising.
Russia has repeatedly fined Google over what it considered to be “false information”. A Moscow court in April ordered the Alphabet subsidiary to pay about Rbs11mn ($173,000) for failing to delete “banned content” about Ukraine from its YouTube video platform.
Fedresurs, Russia’s financial registry, said in a notice published on Wednesday that Google said it foresaw “its own bankruptcy and the impossibility of fulfilling financial obligations” from Sunday.