A line of creditors lined up against the bankrupt Russian legal entity of the American Google – Google LLC: 885 Russian organizations filed applications to include their claims in the lawsuit. This follows from the materials of the file of arbitration cases. Among them are companies from the media industry (FGBU “Editorial Office of Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, JSC “Mediascope”, JSC “Rosbusinessconsulting”, JSC “Kommersant”, LLC “Shkulev Media”, ANO “TV News”), IT companies (LLC “VK ”, Docsvizhn LLC, Skilfactory LLC, Diasoft LLC, Epam Systems LLC, 1C-Bitrix LLC, Netology LLC, Geoscan LLC), etc.
The revenue of Google LLC in 2021 increased by 1.6 times to 134.3 billion rubles, follows from the SPARK database. Net loss in 2021 amounted to RUB 26.4 billion. against a net profit of 1.7 billion rubles. in 2020. The owner of the Russian company is the American Google International LLC. There are no data for 2022 in the database.
Now only 66 companies with declared claims for a total amount of 105 million rubles are included in the register of claims of creditors of the third stage against Google, follows from the latest version of the download from the Casebook system for monitoring court cases. The largest creditors are Shkulev Media LLC with declared claims for 31.2 million rubles. and JSC “VTB Leasing” with the amount of 24.3 million rubles. Vedomosti sent inquiries to Shkulev Media and VTB Leasing.
Most of the lawsuits are related to the failure to provide advertising services. A source in one of the plaintiff companies interviewed by Vedomosti said that it launched contextual advertising on Google. After Google LLC filed for bankruptcy and suspended the provision of advertising services, the company already had funds in the account in the advertising office that it could not withdraw, the source explained. After that, the company went to court, but does not hope to return the money spent. Another company is demanding compensation of debts of several million rubles for services rendered for advertising on platforms, its representative said.
The companies’ claims are related to the scheme of advance payments under advertising contracts that Google has not worked out, Artur Zurabyan, head of the dispute resolution practice at Art De Lex law firm, confirms. Companies paid Google for advertising services that were not actually provided, agrees Yulia Mikhalchuk, a lawyer and teacher at the Moscow Digital School educational platform.
In addition, the ruling of the Moscow Arbitration Court in the bankruptcy case of Google included in the third place the requirement of Roskomnadzor (RKN) in the amount of about 19.6 billion rubles, Zurabyan specifies. Accordingly, today this requirement repeatedly overlaps all other, included and declared requirements, he says.
The representative of the RKN explained that 19.6 billion rubles. This is the part of the fine that remains unpaid today. “The total amount of fines imposed by the court is 28.3 billion rubles, of which only 62 million were paid by the company voluntarily, and more than 8.7 billion were forcibly collected by bailiffs,” the representative of the department specified.
The Russian division of the American corporation filed for bankruptcy back in June 2022. On September 26, 2022, the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal of Moscow suspended the bankruptcy proceedings of Google at the request of the RKN, due to the fact that Google did not pay off one of the two negotiable fines. The first was issued in the amount of 7.2 billion rubles. in December 2021 and was fully recovered from Google by the bailiffs. The second fine for repeated failure to remove information prohibited in Russia was issued for 21.7 billion rubles, Vedomosti wrote. It was a record fine against an IT company in Russia.
Although the fine was never paid in full, the monitoring procedure at Google LLC was resumed on November 24, 2022, and Valery Talyarovsky was appointed interim manager, follows from the company’s card based on Fedresurs. Vedomosti sent a request to Talyarovsky.
Taking into account the fact that now only the first bankruptcy procedure is applied to Google – supervision, such requirements will be considered in bankruptcy proceedings, Zurabyan explains. “As a general rule, there should not be legal entities in the first and second stages. These include payments for labor obligations, damage to life and health, royalties and related payments, ”the lawyer lists.
“Given that the monitoring procedure was introduced in relation to the company before one of the court fines was issued, such a fine will relate to the current debt, which is satisfied as a priority,” says Oleg Permyakov, partner at Rustam Kurmaev and Partners. This means that Google will first have to pay a fine, and only then satisfy the requirements of creditors, if possible, he adds.
It is unlikely that companies submit applications to the register of creditor claims, knowing that they will not return anything, believes Andrey Tretyakov, a lawyer and teacher at the Moscow Digital School educational platform. Google’s revenue in 2021 was more than 134.3 billion rubles, and assets amount to 6.8 billion rubles, he draws attention. However, creditors should be prepared for the fact that their claims can be considered for years, he points out.
The return of funds by creditors will depend on where the money received by Google in Russia went, Mikhalchuk argues. If Google sent them to foreign jurisdictions, such as the parent company, then with the current sanctions, it will be very difficult to actually return them back, the lawyer warns. In this case, the procedure can stretch for several years and it is far from a fact that it will be crowned with success. But at this stage it is premature to talk about failure – the manager will have to find all the property of the company and report it to creditors, she notes.