The fruity cargo cult Apple has been caught funnelling cash to a sanctioned Russian outfit through a UK bank, and the Treasury bean-counters were not amused.
The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation slapped a £390,000 (€456,000) penalty on Monday on Job’s Mob’s Irish subsidiary, ADI, for breaching Russia sanctions.
Regulators said ADI paid £635,618.75 (€744,000) to Okko, a Russian video streaming service, in two instalments in 2022 via a UK-based bank. ADI sells Job’s Mob gear across Europe and the Middle East.
Cork-based ADI runs App Store services and handles developer payments in the UK and EU, so the money trail was never going to stay hidden for long.
OFSI said ADI “voluntarily disclosed the payments in this case to OFSI” in October 2022. It added that “on the balance of probabilities” the unit had breached sanctions on doing business with Russian-owned companies.
Job’s Mob said it takes sanctions compliance “extremely seriously”.
“After identifying two payments to a developer that days earlier had become affiliated with a sanctioned entity, it promptly and proactively reported our finding to the UK government,” the company said.
“We are constantly working to enhance our already robust compliance protocols, which are consistent with industry standards.”
The fine is OFSI’s second this year, after it hit Lloyds Banking Group in January for opening an account for an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
OFSI penalties are a rare beast, with fewer than 20 issued since 2019, even as ministers talk tough about squeezing Moscow’s war machine.
This case is the first OFSI settlement under a scheme introduced last month to speed up enforcement. The deal offers discounts if the targets waive their right to challenge decisions in court.
OFSI said the maximum penalty was £1m (€1.17m), which was reduced because ADI self-reported and accepted the settlement discount.
The payments appear to be payouts linked to customer purchases made through the iPhone App Store. Job’s Mob typically takes a fee of up to 30 per cent.
Okko was owned by Sberbank between August 2018 and May 2022, before being sold, along with other tech assets, to JSC New Opportunities, a Moscow-based entity created only weeks earlier.
The UK sanctioned JSC in June, and OFSI said ADI authorised two payments to Okko after that designation landed.
Russian media framed the sale as part of a Sberbank strategy shift, but the Foundation for Defence of Democracies called it an “apparent attempt to evade sanctions”, pointing to reliance on Western app stores.
