Google went to Finland for its AI expansion. Now a cleared forest and a police probe threaten to overshadow its $15 billion investment

The aggressive attempts by Google to develop its infrastructure for artificial intelligence in Finland appear to have hit a snag in the form of a criminal investigation into alleged environmental offences at one of the proposed data centre locations.

Finland’s police force has begun investigating the activities conducted at the proposed location of a data centre in Muhos, which is a town located in the northern parts of the country. There are suspicions that Google’s Finnish subsidiary, Tuike Finland, cleared the forest and performed drainage activities without conducting environmental impact assessments as required by law.