UPDATE: Google could lose Russia if continues to break antirust law

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MOSCOW, Dec 5 (PRIME) -- Google can lose the Russian market if it continues to violate the antitrust law and ignore warrants and orders of the Federal Antimonopoly Service and courts, the service’s Director Igor Artemyev said on Monday in an interview to the NTV television channel.

“I think the story with Google will end the way the Russian courts have decided, because what we can do further will be very sensitive for Google,” Artemyev said.

“To say more, we’re creating a Russian precedent for disrespect of local courts, and our example will be followed by the Indian authorities and those of other BRICS members, which concentrate about 50% of the services consumed globally, I think. They could lose the markets they’ve never though they could or face very serious limitations on the use of their products on these markets.

We’d like to see them in equal conditions with our companies. However, if they want to be different, to violate the antimonopoly law, they’ll find themselves in worse conditions than our companies and lose the market.”

The antimonopoly service found Google guilty in September 2015 of abusing its dominance on the local market of preinstalled application stores on Android devices and forcing smartphone manufacturers to embed Google Play in a tie-up with the company’s other applications.

The authority brought the company to administrative responsibility and imposed a 438 million ruble fine. Google litigated the fine, but the court has not considered it yet.

The antitrust watchdog also prosecuted Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. in November for a failure to fix the breaches and fined 500,000 rubles each. Google contested these penalties as well.

Artemyev said that Google’s managers, who work in Russia, could be brought to criminal liability for ignoring the service’s warrant to improve violations.

“We see them unwilling to pay fines and follow our orders. We’ve filed a suit to force them to obey. What will it mean if the order is not fulfilled should the court confirm its decision? Criminal liability for up to two years…for managers of a certain company who failed to respect an order, both local and foreign citizens. The other thing is that it could be difficult to engage foreign citizens, while local ones could be involved,” Artemyev said.

The service does not aim to draw attention to foreign companies, which should respect local laws and be in equal conditions with Russian firms, he said.

(64.1528 rubles – U.S. $1)

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