The investigation focused on Alibaba’s practice of banning merchants from offering their products simultaneously on rival ecommerce sites
Chinese authorities have imposed a massive fine of 18.2 billion yuan, or 2.8 billion dollars, on Alibaba Group accusing the Chinese online retail giant of violating monopoly rules. According to reports from the state agency Xinhua, the Chinese market control administration has decided on the fine after establishing that the largest e-commerce platform in the world has exploited its dominant position to the detriment of the competition. The amount of the fine corresponds to 4% of domestic sales recorded in 2019, equal to 456 billion yuan.
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce leader founded by Jack Ma and one of the richest companies in the world, said it accepted the sanction and pledged to outline plans to make its operations compliant as early as Monday. The investigation that led to the fine focused on Alibaba’s practice of banning merchants from offering their products simultaneously on rival e-commerce sites.
Loading…
The launch of the investigation against Alibaba was announced last December by the Chinese authorities.