Apple’s Irish subsidiary has been fined £390,000 (about US $516,110) by the UK government for making payments to Okka, a sanctioned Russian streaming platform in 2022, reports MacRumors.
The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) said it imposed the penalty for breaches of the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (“the Russia Regulations”), namely regulation 12 which prohibits (among other conduct) making funds available to a person owned or controlled by a designated person.
OFSI said ADI, a non-UK person, instructed a UK based bank to make two payments (one in June 2022 and another in July 2022) totaling £635,618.75 to Okko LLC (“Okko”), a company wholly owned at the time of the payments (and in the case of the July
payment also at the time of payment instruction) by the designated person JSC New Opportunities (UKSL ref RUS1489). ADI didn’t cancel these instructions, leading to the subsequent release of funds to Okko.
“This conduct, in particular the failure to cancel (an omission), amounted to conduct in the UK by ADI,” says theOFSI. “OFSI imposed a monetary penalty on ADI because it was satisfied, in relation to these payments, that on the balance of probabilities,
Apple denies it did anything wrong has said: “Apple said: We follow the laws in the countries where we operate and take sanctions compliance extremely seriously. After identifying two payments to a developer that days earlier had become affiliated with a sanctioned entity, we promptly and proactively reported our finding to the UK government. We are constantly working to enhance our already robust compliance protocols, which are consistent with industry standards.”
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