A Mexican court ordered Google to pay $245 million to a Mexican lawyer who claimed the US tech giant allowed the distribution of a blog accusing him of money laundering.
Google stated that it would appeal the decision.
“We deplore the conviction,” Google said in a brief statement received by AFP, confirming the fine of five billion pesos (234.25 million euros).
Google said the ruling was “arbitrary, excessive and without any basis. Google will defend itself until the last instance.”
The plaintiff is a Mexican lawyer named Ulrich Richter Morales, who accused the tech platform of allowing the dissemination of a blog that implicated him in alleged money laundering, influence peddling, and document falsification offenses.
“I am speechless. Thank you,” Richter Morales said on Twitter. He is the author of several books on citizenship, one of which is called “Digital citizen. Fake news and post-truth in the era of the internet.”
Richter Morales stated that in 2015, he requested that Google remove the anonymous blog. He then filed a claim for “moral damages,” which he won in a lower court.
The case could end up before the Supreme Court.
Google said in a statement that the June 13 Mexican court ruling “undermines freedom of expression and other fundamental principles.”
“We trust that the federal courts will act strictly in accordance with these principles,” it said.
In other countries, Google has already received a number of such complaints.
In early June, an Australian federal court ordered Google to pay more than 466,000 euros ($487,700) to an Australian politician who claimed he was defamed in videos hosted by Google-owned YouTube.
