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A Moscow Arbitration Court reportedly seized nearly $11 million belonging to Dell LLC after the company failed to provide paid services to a local system integrator.
IT systems integrator Talmer sued Dell early last month after the US IT giant refused to provide technical support services for VMware as previously agreed. Dell is the VMware representative in Russia and has been reselling these services until March 1, 2022.
The Moscow-based company had reportedly paid Dell for these services in advance, but since they never received them, it was a breach of the terms of service.
Sanctions imposed on Russia by the Western world and public sentiment have forced companies like Dell and VMware to scale back their operations.
“At the same time, despite the termination of the provision of services by WMware in the Russian Federation, the defendant did not take any action on an alternative method of fulfilling the obligations and did not return advance payments to Talmer LLC”, specifies the court. failure according to the Russian media that have reproduced it.
Due to this ruling, Russian courts seized 778,526,223 rubles from local bank accounts, which is currently valued at about $10,900,000.
The ruling can be appealed to the 9th Arbitration Court of Appeals within a month, but Dell did not comment on whether it plans to exercise that right.
Requesting comment on the seizure, a Dell spokesperson told BleepingComputer that they do not comment on pending litigation.
Apple and Netflix also sued
Late last month, Apple faced a similar legal issue after a Russian law firm filed a class-action lawsuit for breach of contract, seeking damages of 90 million rubles, roughly $1,290,000.
The lawsuit claims that Apple unilaterally withdrew its payment service from the country, Apple Pay, depriving Russian iOS users of a feature that was marketed to them and that they expected to enjoy indefinitely when they bought their iPhones.
Apple’s move has essentially debased the value of the iPhone in Russia, further increasing the total damages that can be claimed, with the law firm also demanding a fine of 50% of the amount of compensation for moral damages.
The same law firm filed a class action lawsuit against Netflix in April for similar reasons of breach of user terms, demanding compensation of 60 million rubles ($860,000).
Legal experts in the Western world agree that the unprecedented sanctions against Russia have pushed everyone into uncharted territory, with companies struggling to chart their moves and assess the consequences of exiting the Russian market.
On the one hand, organizations must monitor and manage rapidly evolving sanctions that encompass a growing list of entities, so as not to risk severe sanctions. On the other hand, they have to deal with civil fines and even criminal prosecutions from Russian customers who drop out.
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