China’s cross-border gambling crackdown has led to the arrest of a co-founder of search engine giant Baidu for allegedly facilitating promotion of illegal online gambling sites.

On Thursday, Chinese media reported that Shi Youcai, a Baidu co-founder who left the company in 2011 but was recalled to a sales role in 2019, was detained several days ago by police in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. Baidu has so far declined to comment on the arrest but reports are that Shi is suspected of promoting online gambling sites based outside China.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Baidu has been accused of allowing gambling sites to promote their wares on the search engine, which handles 90% of online queries in China. In 2016, Baidu was accused of turning a blind eye to ‘stealth’ marketing, in which users clicked on an innocuous link returned via a search query and instead found themselves directed to internationally based gambling sites.

Last year, Baidu and rival Sohu had their news portals suspended for a week after China’s cyber watchdogs found fault with their efforts to purge ‘vulgar’ information, including gambling, porn and political views that clash with Beijing’s worldview.