MOSCOW, January 25 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Commercial Court will hear the dispute between Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and Google, over corporation’s refusal to comply with the antimonopoly watchdog’s ruling, behind closed doors, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday.
A motion to hear the case behind closed doors was filed by Google. A representative of the corporation said that court documents contain commercial secret. He also filed a motion to stop proceedings in this case.
On January 17, Google Inc. filed an appeal against the Moscow Commercial Court’s refusal to overrule the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s (FAS) decision.
The watchdog held that Google Ireland Ltd. and Google Inc. had violated anti-monopoly law by abusing their dominance on the Russian market of mobile applications.
The Moscow City Court dismissed a lawsuit against the watchdog in March 2016. The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals has upheld the ruling. In early August, FAS announced that it had fined Google 438 million rubles ($6.7 million) for violating administrative legislation.
On September 18, 2015, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found Google guilty of violation the legislation.
On November 2, the watchdog fined the companies 500,000 rubles each for their failure to comply with its order.
On November 30, FAS announced that it had filed a lawsuit with a commercial court against Google, forcing it to follow the order.
Yet in September, Igor Artemyev, the Head of FAS, stated that the agency was ready to fine Google every two weeks if the company failed to comply with the order.
“In case we see the process is dragged out, we will meet every two weeks to impose new fines on them for failing to comply with the order,” Artemyev said. “It will continue until the final victory [is achieved - ed.] and final court judgement [is passed - ed.],” according to Artemyev.
