A woman passes by a Re: Store (Apple official distributor in Russia), in a moscow shopping center, March 13, 2023. Photo: Sopa Images, Sopa Images Limited / Alamy / Profimedia
A Russian court has fined the American giant in the field of Apple technology with 10.5 million rubles ($ 130,483), in four separate administrative processes, three of whom referred to Russia's rules on what Moscow calls “LGBT propaganda”, the court's press office announced on Monday, according to Reuters.
In 2023, Russian legislative authorities extended the restrictions on promoting “non -traditional sexual relations” in the context of a wider repression against the rights of the LGBT community, which President Vladimir Putin tried to show as a proof of “moral decay” in Western countries.
The Tagansky Court in Moscow found the American company Apple Distribution International LTD guilty of three administrative offenses related to LGBT propaganda, having the payment of three fines of 2.5 million rubles each.
The fourth fine, worth 3 million rubles, followed, because Apple did not restrict access to a certain type of online content, unspecified in the court's decision, which Moscow considers illegally.
Apple did not respond immediately to a request to provide a point of view, notes Reuters.
The Apple representative before the court requested that the court hearings be closed to the public, wrote the Russian Independent Mediazona, which means that the cause of each litigation is not known.
The Russian authorities have designated the “International LGBT” as “extremist”, and those who support it were designated “terrorists”, thus opening the way for serious criminal files against people in the LGBT community and their supporters, writes the News Agency.
The Russian courts have so far applied a series of fines for violating the law on “LGBT propaganda”, including online distributors and executive directors of such companies.
