ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakhstan said on Thursday it had restored access to Microsoft subsidiary LinkedIn's website, after briefly blocking it this week over what the Central Asian country's government said were online casino advertisements and fake accounts.

The Ministry of Information and Social Development said in a statement it had held talks with LinkedIn representatives and the company had already removed the content deemed illegal by the Nur-Sultan government.

It is illegal to advertise online casinos in Kazakhstan.

LinkedIn said this week it was investigating the issue, saying its own policies prohibited ads relating to gambling and fake profiles.

About 720,000 Kazakhs are LinkedIn members, according to Ukraine-based analytics firm Linked-Promo.

In neighbouring Russia, with which Kazakhstan has close political and economic ties, LinkedIn has been blocked since 2016 when Moscow said the company failed to transfer Russian user data to servers located in the country.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-kazakhstan-linkedin/kazakhstan-restores-access-to-linkedin-after-talks-with-firm-idUSKBN2EZ0MF