The Russian telecom regulatory authority Roskomnadzor has slapped a penalty of 500,000 rubles ($7,520) on Google for not removing illegal gambling websites from its search results. The Russian authority has also blocked 3000 gambling websites. A majority of blocked websites are “mirrors” of famous brands of bookmaker offices. Also among the blocked websites are Online poker rooms, online lotteries, and online casinos domains.
According to current Russian law, effective from 1 November 2017, all search engine operators must check a centralised registry of prohibited websites and remove those websites from the search results. The registry contains more than 100,000 websites. The government is preparing draft law as well, which will raise the penalty for such violations in future.
