Out of Office: Russia rattles West with aircraft leasing law; Meta meets a €17m DPC fine

Russia passed a law allowing the country's airlines to place airplanes leased from foreign companies, including those from Ireland, on the country's aircraft register. The bill, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, rattled global leasing firms days before a March 28 deadline to repossess aircraft worth $10 billion as a result of Western sanctions imposed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russian airlines have almost 780 leased jets, with 515 leased from abroad.

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced a €17 million fine on Facebook’s parent company Meta over a number of data breaches. The DPC said in a ruling that the fine relates to 12 data breach notifications received between June and December 2018. The inquiry examined the extent to which Meta Platforms complied with the requirements of several articles under General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation relating to the processing of personal data relevant to these notifications. The DPC found that Meta Platforms “failed to have in place appropriate technical and organisational measures which would enable it to readily demonstrate the security measures that it implemented in practice to protect EU users’ data” in respect of these breaches.