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Google asks for closed-door hearing of action against Russian antimonopoly regulator

The court did not consider this issue and postponed the preliminary hearing until February 5

MOSCOW, January 25. /TASS/. The US Google Corporation applied with a petition to the Moscow Arbitration for the closed-door hearing of its declaration to invalidate the decision of the Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), TASS reports from the court chambers on Monday after the preliminary hearing of the case.

The company explained its request by materials representing the commercial secret comprised in the case. "Google does not want information pertaining to legally significant one, particularly the content of agreements with company’s contractors and commercial secret, to become part of public and competitors’ domain," representative of the corporation said during the trial.

The court did not consider this issue and postponed the preliminary hearing until February 5.

On September 14, 2015, the Federal Antimonopoly Service declared that Google - Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. breached the law on protection of competition following a complaint filed by Russian search engine Yandex.

The sum of the fine includes Google's revenues from sales of all applications in Google Play, music, videos, etc. for 2014 in Russia.

Russia’s competition law violation penalty for US Google Corporation would most likely amount to 7% of the turnover in 2014 with addressed inflation, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Igor Artemyev said on January 14. According to experience of the regulator, Google may dispute the decision for at least a year and the process of curing the violation and paying the fine may last until 2017, FAS head added.