The company intends to appeal the decision.
MLU B.V., the company that operates Yango in Europe, has been fined €100 million for transferring personal data of app users to Russia. This was reported by Yle, citing Finland’s Data Protection Ombudsman. According to the report, the decision was jointly issued by the data protection authorities of the Netherlands, Finland, and Norway.
MLU B.V. is the former joint venture between Yandex and Uber, registered in the Netherlands (as clarified by RBC). The investigation has been ongoing since 2023, examining whether Yango was transferring data of users in Finland and Norway to Russia, and whether adequate protection of personal data was being ensured.
According to MLU B.V. representatives, the company “complied with all necessary safeguards in accordance with European law” and stored personal data in encrypted form within EU territory. They also specifically noted that Yango has not been operating in Norway and Finland since 2025.
Netherlands-based Yandex N.V. completed the sale of Russian Yandex assets in the summer of 2024 and rebranded as Nebius. It now focuses on building artificial intelligence infrastructure and is developing Toloka (data labeling), Avride (autonomous vehicles), and TripleTen (educational services). The taxi business remains within Russia’s PJSC Yandex.
