Yandex.Food was fined

The police have made claims for hiring couriers.
The Metropolitan Police brought to administrative responsibility the Yandex.Food online service. For illegal involvement in labor activity of foreigners, the company may face a fine of up to 1 million rubles. or temporary suspension of activity. Yandex.Eda insists that it does not have a working relationship with couriers. Service competitors have not yet faced similar claims, but lawyers do not rule out the emergence of a wave of such cases.

The Department of Migration Affairs of the Department of Internal Affairs for the North-Eastern district of Moscow found Yandex.Eda LLC (controlled by Yandex.Taxi, in which 61% own Yandex and 38% - Uber) of violating the rules for attracting foreign citizens to performance of labor duties, follows from the definition of the Arbitration Court of Moscow on July 19. The court refused to accept the claim of Yandex.Ede on the recognition of the unlawful and annulment of the decision on bringing to administrative responsibility of June 25, having decided that it should be considered in a court of general jurisdiction.

As of July 24, there were no applications from Yandex.Eda in the card file of the courts of general jurisdiction of Moscow. The representative of the service could not answer “Kommersant”, whether the company will file another lawsuit to cancel the decision. “According to Yandex.Eddy, the process is underway to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, we cannot comment on the details,” the company reported. “Our basic position on this case as a whole is that Yandex.Food is an information service, we have no working relationship with by couriers. They work with our partners who provide food delivery services to our users. ”

Yandex.Eda works in 30 cities of Russia. At the end of 2018, the service served more than 8 thousand restaurants, approximately 85% of orders use their own delivery Yandex. Food. 16 courier companies work with the service, the rest of the orders are delivered by the restaurants themselves, whose couriers do not use equipment with the Yandex.Edas brand.

The Delivery Club is also not involved in labor relations with couriers and works through courier services, a representative who owns the Mail.ru Group service told Kommersant. “With regard to claims from regulatory authorities, we work within the framework of the legislation of the Russian Federation and have not received any official notification of violations,” the Mail.ru Group noted.

Illegal involvement in labor activities of a foreign citizen in Moscow may result in an administrative fine in the amount of 400 thousand rubles. up to 1 million rubles. for legal entities, notes Ilya Zharsky, managing partner of the Veta expert group. There is a more severe sanction - administrative suspension of activities for a period of 14 to 90 days, which can lead to lost profits and losses, he points out. The story with the involvement of “Yandex.Ede” to responsibility for this article can be considered indicative, similar cases against companies of this magnitude have not yet been, the expert states.

“Yandex.Eda” is only an information resource, delivery is carried out by service partners, confirms Oleg Khmelevsky, a senior lawyer at BGP Litigation. It’s the partners that attract foreign citizens to work, and they should also be responsible, the lawyer said.

The police, apparently, have a different opinion, indicates Law & Commerce Partner Offer Anton Alekseev: “The presence of a company uniform, the receipt of orders using company applications, a bag with a company logo, and the testimony of foreign workers themselves can testify to actually established labor relations ". Perhaps the Ministry of Internal Affairs began to form the practice of such an accusation, and if the first rulings stand up in court, it is likely that there will be “some wave” of such cases, Mr. Alekseyev expects.

This will not affect food delivery services, they will continue to grow rapidly, the head of the cluster of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications Sharing Economy, Anton Gubnitsyn, is sure. “Yandex.Food may set stricter criteria for partner delivery services. For example, to be fined for violations of immigration records, ”he said.