A court in South Africa decided to seize Google's assets by decision of the Moscow arbitration

The Supreme Court of the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) recognized and began to enforce the decision of the Moscow arbitration court in favor of Google's Russian subsidiary in the bankruptcy case. The relevant information on October 9 follows from the court order, the Vedomosti newspaper reports.

"This judicial act provided for the accrual of a court penalty, which Google tried to avoid by zeroing its account under the guise of paying dividends abroad," Artur Zurabyan, partner at Art De Lex law firm, told the publication.

At the end of August 2025, the Supreme Court of South Africa decided to seize all assets of Google Internationsl LLC located in the republic. In addition, the court approved the authority of the bankruptcy trustee Valery Talyarovsky to act on behalf of Google LLC in this proceeding.

This is the first time that a foreign court has decided to act in the interests of a Russian subsidiary of the company.

Payment structure: Russian authorities collected 13 billion rubles in fines from Google

But this is only a small fraction of the debts of an American company — do creditors have any chance of recovering their funds?

On July 25, Vedomosti, citing the Moscow Arbitration Court, announced that Google's Irish office had been banned from continuing legal proceedings in a US court in cases related to the challenging of transactions by Valery Talyarovsky, the managing director of the subsidiary, in the bankruptcy case of Google LLC. It is specified that more than 65 billion rubles can be recovered from Google Ireland Limited for each claim.

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