According to the Belarusian portal Motolko.help, developers with a Belarusian registration address began to receive letters from Apple with a notification about the imposition of sanctions and account deactivation. Notifications are received even by those users who have already re-registered their accounts from Belarus to addresses in other countries. iTunes content makers using paid subscriptions to Apple Podcasts cannot withdraw funds either.

“We noticed a problem while verifying your account. The legal entity information associated with your account fully matches the restricted country or one or more countries on the U.S. government’s consolidated watch list, another government’s sanctions list, or the restricted regions list,” Apple said in the notice, quoted by Motolko.help.

In addition, according to the portal, in the App Store Connect developer's personal account in the "Legal entities" and "Banking" blocks, a column with a status appeared, which displays whether the account or legal entity falls under sanctions or not.

Editors have not yet been able to find additional information on this issue. But it is worth noting that a similar situation already occurred several years ago in relation to developers from Russia and the CIS. In particular, in 2014, there was a wave of discontent on the forums of iOS application developers due to the blocking of Russian accounts without explanation. People had to write a collective complaint demanding to explain the situation. Then access to iTunesConnect and iCloud services was also blocked. At the beginning of 2015, users from Crimea received similar blocking messages.

In 2015, another wave of payment suspensions swept after the issuance of Council of Europe Resolution No. 1351/2014 and US Presidential Decree No. 13685 prohibiting the provision of services in certain territories and work with partner banks in Russia and Eastern Europe. Developers had to open bank accounts that were not subject to sanctions in order to receive the funds they earned.

bbabo.Net