Russia’s telecom watchdog has made good on its threat to issue a financial penalty to Google for refusing to scrub forbidden material – including internationally licensed gambling sites – from its Russian search results.

On Tuesday, Russian news outlet Tass reported that Russia’s Roskomnadzor telecom watchdog had imposed a RUB500k (US$7,500) fine on the Western tech giant for failing to connect its Russian search results with the country’s federal state information system (FGIS).

Roskomnadzor opened an administrative case against Google in late November, after repeatedly complaining that the search engine was continuing to allow “prohibited internet resources” to appear in search results for Russian users. These include the tens of thousands of online gambling domains that Roskomnadzor blacklists each year, including another 13,600 domains in the month of November and another 3,200 in just the first week of December.

Google’s fine is below the maximum penalty of RUB700k that Russian law allows for this type of offense, suggesting that Roskomnadzor is at least attempting to show some restraint, perhaps in the hope that the tech giant will prove more amenable to the watchdog’s requests/demands.