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A Russian court has imposed a massive fine of $20.6 decillion on Google for banning accounts on YouTube.
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No one expects Google to pay the amount, which is higher than global GDP.
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The fine points to a Russian legal system that focuses more on symbolic punishments than enforcement.
Do you have 20 decillion dollars left? Google doesn’t, and neither does any individual or entity in human history.
Yet a Russian court claims the company owes it as punishment for suspending accounts on YouTube.
That punishment initially resulted in a modest fine, which doubled after non-payment, then doubled again, and again, thus becoming absurd.
Last week this was $20.6 decillion. Fully written it is $20,604,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
It exceeds by many orders of magnitude the US federal budget ($6.75 trillion) and the estimated global GDP of approximately $105 trillion.
So – what gives?
There is not much left of Google in Russia that authorities can enforce a fine on, and the prospect of other courts enforcing the ruling is virtually nil.
But it does send a message: Russia is not happy.
An angry signal
The Kremlin saw it as such last week, when its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said he struggled with the size of the number but saw it as “filled with symbolism.”
Legal experts told Business Insider that it symbolizes a Russian legal and economic system that is alienated from much of the world.
While Russia can crack down on Western companies and make extraordinary financial demands, it has little ability to influence their behavior.
Russia is “pretty powerless” to really punish Google, said Tyler Kustra, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Britain’s University of Nottingham.
The mega fine is “more intended to convey a message than to do anything in particular,” he said.
Judges have gone wild
Kustra said the figure exposed a lack of checks and balances within the Russian legal system, which is content to let the mathematical power of compiling the fine veer into surreal territory.
“If a British court or a US court were to impose such a fine, an appeal court would immediately dismiss it as a clear example of judicial abuse,” he said.
But while the size of the fine puts it in a league of its own, it is in line with other legal punitive measures taken against Western companies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia has effectively nullified intellectual property rights, allowing its companies to freely use patents and designs from Western companies.
It has also imposed fines on companies trying to exit their Russian operations, requiring assets to be sold at a deep discount while imposing a hefty “exit tax.”
Dutch beer producer Heineken was among those who withdrew from Russia at great cost. He sold his operations for one euro and incurred a loss of approximately $325 million.
During the war, Russian courts also seized assets of Western companies such as Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
‘Economic warfare’
The Google fine “makes a symbolic statement about the extent to which Russia and the U.S. are engaged in economic warfare,” said Christine Abely, an assistant professor at New England Law who wrote a book on Russian sanctions.
In an email to BI, Abely said: “This is consistent with Russia’s use of other economic weapons against the US.”
However, Russia and its judges may feel that they are only giving as good as they can get.
Western countries have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, sowing chaos in the economy, especially for Russian companies operating abroad.
And American dominance over the global financial system gives sanctions and restrictions a weight that Russia cannot match.
Trying to stand up for yourself without that strength could result in a fine greater than the money itself.
Nathanael Tilahun, senior lecturer in international law at the University of Essex, told BI that Russia’s moves could be seen as a “mirror image” response to the West.
The scientists BI spoke with did not expect a court in another country to try to enforce the Google fine.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also appears to be experiencing no problems.
While the company has not commented on the $20 decillion figure, it has repeatedly downplayed the risk of the matter and said in its latest earnings statement that it did not foresee a “material adverse impact.”
A spreading dispute
The Google fine may stand alone in its sheer scale, but a series of smaller battles are straining legal systems around the world.
A recent Bloomberg report examined the legal landscape – many of them Russia-linked disputes were fought through the English courts, some of which spilled over into jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, South Africa and the Netherlands.
Once-rare decisions, in which one judge overturns the decision of another, are becoming commonplace, the report said, making international business disputes a narrower area than ever.
Oleksandra Iordanova, a lawyer at the Swedish firm Snellman, described the situation to Bloomberg as “a fundamental break in the international legal order at a time when global trade and investment are more intertwined than ever.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
