Russian Antimonopoly Watchdog Fines Google $1,560 Over Illegal Ads of Financial Services

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said that it has fined Google 100,000 roubles, or about $1,560, for overspreading illegal ads for financial services.
Sputnik

"Russia's FAS fined Goggle LLC 100,000 roubles as a publisher of improper advertisements of the financial services of the Ali Trade company with the help of the Google AdWords service", FAS said in a press release.

Prior to this, Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said that Google had paid a fine of 700,000 roubles, or $10,900, for failing to delete search results linking to banned content.

Earlier in September, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service commission recognised the advertisement of “earnings on investments” of the company Ali Trade as being in contradiction with the requirements of the law on advertising, as the organisation is not in the register of licenses of joint-stock investment funds located on the official website of the Central Bank and, therefore, does not have a license to carry out the activities of an investment fund.

The watchdog also slapped the tech giant with a nearly $11,000 fine in July for failing to remove certain content from its traffic that is considered to be in violation of Russian Internet laws. The watchdog noted that more than a third of the links from the unified registry of illegal content remained in the search results.

Last year, Russia submitted a law that obliges online search engines to remove any hyperlinks to content that is banned in the country. Google has refused to connect to the federal information system where the banned websites are listed.

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