UK fines Apple subsidiary for paying a sanctioned Russian streaming service through the App Store

The UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has fined Apple Distribution International, Apple’s Ireland-based subsidiary, £390,000 for making two payments totalling more than £635,000 to a sanctioned Russian entity through the App Store in 2022. The fine is, by Apple’s standards, negligible: roughly 0.00001 per cent of the company’s annual revenue. The precedent it sets is not.

This is the first time a UK sanctions regulator has penalised a major technology platform for processing developer payments to a sanctioned entity. It establishes explicitly that app store payment flows fall within OFSI’s enforcement scope and that the companies operating those platforms bear compliance obligations that extend to knowing who their developers are, who owns them, and when that ownership changes.

What happened

The payments went to Okko, a Russian video streaming service. Okko had been owned by Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank and ...