MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. A Moscow court has fined Amazon more than 200 million rubles ($2.25 mln) for an administrative offense related to not having a representative office in Russia, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom of the magistrate court department No. 422.

"The court ruled to find Amazon Web Services, Inc. (a division of Amazon's parent company - TASS) guilty under Part 2 of Article 13.49 (carrying out activities on the Internet by a foreign legal entity on the territory of the Russian Federation without posting an electronic form for sending appeals from Russian citizens and organizations, or without creating a branch, or opening a representative office, or establishing a Russian legal entity) and sentenced it to a fine in the amount of 200,469,997 rubles," judge Alexandra Mikhaleva announced.

As stated in the case files, the reason for bringing the company to administrative responsibility was that it operated in Russia without a branch or representative office. According to the law, under this article, legal entities face a fine equal to 1/15 to 1/10 of total revenue for the calendar year. The court on Wednesday is considering similar protocols against 10 more foreign companies.

In September last year, the Russian media watchdog (Roskomnadzor) obliged the companies Hetzner Online GmbH, Network Solutions, WPEngine, HostGator.com, Ionos, DreamHost, FastComet, Amazon Web Services, GoDaddy.com, Bluehost, Kamatera and DigitalOcean to be flagged as violators of Russian laws. The reason was their violation of the legislation on the activities on the Internet by a foreign legal entity on the territory of the Russian Federation. Under the law, companies must register a personal account on the Roskomnadzor website, post a feedback form for Russian citizens and organizations, and open a representative office in Russia.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a commercial public cloud that was launched by parent company Amazon in 2006. It provides paid services for data storage and interoperability between various applications.

Amazon has repeatedly been fined in Russia for refusing to remove prohibited information. In October 2022, the US company was fined 3 million rubles ($33,854) for refusing to remove a repost on an Amazon-related social network from the Hydra website (banned in the Russian Federation), which contains information about the manufacture and sale of drugs. Also, in the fall of 2022, Amazon was fined 1 million rubles ($11,284) for publishing content promoting suicide on its platform.