The Moscow Arbitration Court seized the property of the American company Amazon and its streaming platform Twitch for 3 billion rubles (about $49.6 million) as an interim measure in a lawsuit about blocking the account of cybersportsman Kirill “Likkrit” Malofeyev, son of a billionaire Konstantin Malofeev.
This is reported by the Russian edition of Forbes.
“Twitch and Amazon feel above Russian law, above a sovereign state. They arbitrarily violate contractual obligations. In fact, such actions are censorship and discriminate against Russian cybersportsmen and their audience,” Likkrit commented on the lawsuit.
According to information in open sources such as Forbes reports, Amazon has assets in Russia, but which ones will be frozen as interim measures will be determined by bailiffs in the implementation of the decision.
The Likkrit’s account on Twitch was blocked in April 2022 after the athlete and his companies were on the US sanctions list. At the time of blocking, Likkrit had about 28,000 subscribers, according to TwitchTracker.
Likkrit played professionally on the LoL scene from 2014-2018. Later, he was the owner and manager of the CrowCrowd esports organization. But in 2022, under pressure from US sanctions, he retired.
His father, Konstantin Malofeev, has been on the US sanctions list since 2014.
The Malofeevs already have court experience with American internet giants. Among the assets of Konstantin Malofeev is Tsargrad TV. The TV company’s YouTube channel was blocked by Google and the elder Malofeev’s holding won a case in a Russian court against the owner of YouTube. He’d ordered Google to pay a huge penalty to a Russian businessman. In July 2022, Google – according to Forbes – offered Malofeev a settlement deal.
