Moldova is reviewing Yandex Go. Its data and ownership questions remain open

Ownership and payment records point to different entities

An Europa Liberă investigation of corporate and court records found estimated 2024 Moldovan revenue of €7.04 million attributed to a Yandex group entity, while the local Ridetech company reported no revenue or profit that year. The reporter's test payments went to group entities in Dubai and Almaty. These are reasons to identify the parties earning from the platform, not proof that the local company should have booked all group revenue. The council's beneficial-owner demand can test who ultimately controls the investment under review.

The same reporting examined a Competition Council dispute over requested driver data. A fine for failing to supply the information was paid on 5 October. The court record did not settle when or where the disputed data had been deleted or stored. That unresolved history gives the new data-protection inquiry a concrete document trail to examine, though a driver-data dispute cannot establish where every passenger record went.

The foreign data finding stops at the Moldovan border

In May, Dutch regulators fined Yango operator MLU B.V. €100 million and ordered an end to inadequately protected transfers of customer and driver data from Norway and Finland to Russia, according to Norway's participating regulator. The records included locations and routes. That enforcement finding is a reason to check the Moldovan service, but it covers users in two other countries. It does not identify a Moldovan transfer.

Yandex told TV8 that its service infrastructure is distributed, including in Russia, after temporary app disruptions in Moldova. It also claimed Moldovan personal data are stored with an EU-based provider. That storage claim needs independent verification, as does who can access the data and from where. A server's location alone cannot settle who can reach a rider's location history. The data-protection authority's requested report is the place to test storage, transmission and access rather than infer them from an outage.

“A server's location alone cannot settle who can reach a rider's location history.”

Tax figures answer narrower questions

The government says Yandex Go licenses its platform, charges a standard 12 percent commission and that local operators pay 20 percent VAT on that commission. It reports about 12.5 million lei in such VAT for 2025. This is a payment associated with platform commissions, not the local company's 2024 revenue figure. Neither number alone determines the tax position of every group entity receiving a fare payment.

The same government statement puts taxes and contributions from taxi operators, including those using Yandex Go, at roughly 216 million lei in 2025. It also says the tax service found declaration discrepancies in around half the rides by 8,781 drivers in early 2026. Those discrepancies call for checks against individual filings and payments. They are not a completed finding that every flagged fare was untaxed or that Yandex Go alone caused the gap. A separate bill to route taxi-platform payments through Moldovan financial institutions passed a first reading in June, according to Europa Liberă. It had not become law by this review's cutoff.

The council has established a formal inquiry, not a verdict on ownership, tax evasion or Moldovan data transfers. Its next useful evidence is the company's beneficial-owner response, an independently checked account of Moldovan users' data storage and access, and final tax determinations tied to specific entities and rides. If those records show a security breach or unlawful conduct, officials can assess a proportionate restriction under the council's powers. Until then, the Norwegian and Finnish case, the payment trail and the tax discrepancies remain separate leads rather than a Moldovan finding against the platform.