MOSCOW, Mar 21The Moscow Arbitration Court on the suit of the football club «Akhmat» (Grozny) against the American company Google LLC and its Russian representative office LLC «Google» recognized the blocking of the club's YouTube channel as illegal and ordered to restore access to it, follows from the information in the filing cabinet of arbitration cases. satisfy completely,» the case file says. In a lawsuit filed with the court in June 2021, demands were made to invalidate the unilateral refusal of service contracts, to restore access to the account, and to recover astrenet (a court fine in case of non-execution of a court decision). Roskomnadzor was involved in the case as a third party. In December 2020, the United States imposed sanctions against the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, established on the initiative of Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as against companies and sports clubs associated with it, including the Grozny Akhmat and the ASA Fighting League. The UK also imposed sanctions. In mid-January 2021, Akhmat's YouTube channel was blocked. FC Akhmat had previously stated on its website that «sanctions against a sports organization and US unilateral restrictive measures as such are an unacceptable and illegal method of political pressure.» The club also said that it had applied to the arbitration court with a demand to remove the blocking from the YouTube channel of FC Akhmat and with a statement to the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia in connection with the presence in Google's actions of signs of abuse of a dominant position in the social video hosting market. the Moscow court rejected the petition of Google LLC to leave the claims against it without consideration, since, according to the defendant, they should be considered by an American court in accordance with the agreement between the parties. As the court noted, the contract includes a clause whereby «if applicable local law precludes resolution of certain disputes in a California court,» customers may submit those disputes to local courts. The court noted that such an obstacle is the norm of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, which establishes the exclusive competence of the arbitration court of the Russian Federation to resolve a dispute, the basis of which is sanctions restrictions of a foreign state.
