Malofeev’s son succeeded in seizing the assets of Twitch and Amazon

The Arbitration Court of the capital arrested money in bank accounts and other assets of the streaming platform Twitch and its owner Amazon for 3 billion rubles. Kirill Malofeev, the son of a Russian businessman and founder of the holding “Tsargrad” Konstantin Malofeev, sent a petition about this to the authorized body.

“Take injunctive relief in the form of a lien on the funds of Amazon.com Inc. and Twitch Interactive Inc. on accounts with credit institutions, as well as on all movable and immovable property owned by Amazon.com Inc. and Twitch Interactive Inc., for a total of RUB 3,000,000,000. 00 kopecks,” according to the conclusion of the Moscow Arbitration Court. What kind of banks and property in question is not specified in the legal act.

Interim measures were taken on November 16 at the suit of Kirill Malofeev. He demanded that the refusal of the agreement to open his likkrit account on Twitch and the partnership agreement to it be declared illegal. The plaintiff also demanded to restore the functionality of the account to the state that it was at the time before the cancellation of the partnership agreement. Malofeev Jr. also wants to recover a penalty in the event of non-execution of a judicial act in the amount of 100 thousand rubles a day, with a subsequent increase in this amount.

On Thursday, December 8, preliminary hearings on the case were held. In a statement to the court, Malofeev indicated that the defendants, the Amazon.com and Twitch platforms, do not have branches in Russia. At the same time, the plaintiff does not have the opportunity to force them to fulfill their legal obligations either on the territory of our country or in the United States. Kirill Malofeev added that the amount of 3 billion rubles is equivalent to at least six months of charging a court penalty.

The US Treasury announced back in April that America was introducing additional sanctions against the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, his company and close associates. For the first time, restrictions against a businessman were launched back in 2014. But under the new sanctions in 2022, his son, along with several of his companies, already fell. In the US, they believe that they are engaged in operations with cryptocurrency. In April, the press reported that the Twitch channel of Malofeev Jr., a former professional League of Legends esports player who worked under the pseudonym Likkrit and is now a co-owner of the CrowCrowd esports organization, was blocked indefinitely due to sanctions.

Recall that the Twitch video streaming platform specializes in computer games and is owned by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of the online retailer and global marketplace Amazon.