Report: U.S.-Sanctioned Firms Find Opening in Apple and Google App Stores
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 10, 2025
Contact: Michael Clauw, mclauw@campaignforaccountability.org, 202.780.5750
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Apple’s App Store hosts dozens of apps for U.S.-sanctioned organizations, including Russian banks propping up Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and a Chinese paramilitary group linked to human rights abuses, according to an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). TTP also found a smaller number of apps connected to U.S.-sanctioned organizations in the Google Play Store—18 compared to Apple’s 52.
Apple and Google both charge a fee to app developers, so they may be violating Treasury Department-enforced sanctions simply by hosting these apps. Although both companies claim to comply with U.S. sanctions, the often-obvious connections to sanctioned entities that TTP surfaced in its review of these apps raise serious questions about how thoroughly Apple and Google vet the apps in their stores.
“Apple and Google are not only providing a valuable service to these companies, but also appear to be engaging in financial transactions with them—a possible sanctions violation,” said Michelle Kuppersmith, Executive Director of Campaign for Accountability, the nonprofit watchdog group that runs TTP.
More than half of the apps that TTP flagged in the Apple App Store were for sanctioned Russian companies. This included multiple companies the U.S. government has sanctioned to try to curtail Russia’s financing of its war in Ukraine. Although Apple has removed some Russian banking apps since the war began, it is unclear why others have slipped through the cracks.
Other examples of sanctioned entities whose apps TTP surfaced in its investigation include: a Chinese paramilitary group accused of human rights abuses against Muslim ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, a company owned by an accused Lithuanian drug trafficker, and a Yemeni financial institution reportedly controlled by Houthi militants.
To get their apps in the app stores, developers must pay Apple and Google a fee. The payment of these fees may violate sanctions enforced by the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which prohibit “the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services” from a sanctioned entity. OFAC clarifies that a U.S. party is still liable for sanctions violations even if they “did not know or have reason to know” they were engaging in a prohibited transaction.
Apple has been fined before by the U.S. government for failing to guard against sanctions violations in the App Store, over a case involving an app linked to a sanctioned Slovenian drug trafficker in 2019. As part of a settlement with the Treasury Department, Apple promised to take steps to improve its sanctions screening tools. Yet, TTP was able to identify these apps through public searches, suggesting Apple is falling short six years later.
Campaign for Accountability is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life and hold those who act at the expense of the public good accountable for their actions.