MOSCOW, August 10 (RAPSI) – A magistrate court on Monday fined Google 1.5 million rubles ($20,300) for repeated violation of the obligationton to filter content banned in Russia, RAPSI was told in Moscow’s Tagansky District Court.

The company was found guilty of repeated failure to perform a search engine operator’s obligations.  

In July 2019, Russia’s communications agency Roskomnadzor imposed a 700,000-ruble fine ($9,500 at the current exchange rate) on Google company for failure to abide by Russian legislation. The company did not connect to Russia’s registry of prohibited websites, according to the watchdog’s statement. In December 2018, the company was fined 500,000 rubles ($6,800 at the current exchange rate) for similar violations.

Russian legislation envisages that search engine operators must exclude links to prohibited websites from the search results. For this purpose, they must connect to the federal state information system with the list of prohibited websites.