The searches come weeks after Reuters reported India’s antitrust physique had discovered the 2 corporations and their sellers violated competitors legal guidelines by giving choice to pick out sellers on their platforms. Both corporations have maintained they adjust to Indian legal guidelines.
One senior authorities supply stated raids have been being carried out in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, however didn’t give names of sellers whose workplaces have been being raided.
“The raids on sellers of Amazon and Flipkart is part of ED’s probe … for alleged violations of international trade legal guidelines,” stated the primary authorities supply with direct data.
Amazon and Flipkart didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. A consultant of the monetary crime company stated he had no rapid remark.
The raids are the most recent setback for Amazon and Flipkart, which rely India as a key development market the place e-commerce gross sales are quickly rising.
The Enforcement Directorate company has been investigating each e-commerce giants for years for allegedly bypassing international funding legal guidelines that strictly regulate multi-brand retail and limit such corporations to working a market for sellers.
The first authorities supply on Thursday stated it was conducting the most recent searches on the observations of the antitrust physique in its just lately concluded investigation of the 2 corporations.
Those Amazon and Flipkart antitrust investigation experiences from August, which aren’t public however have been seen by Reuters, say the platforms “had end-to-end management over the stock and the sellers are simply title lending enterprises.”
A Reuters investigation in 2021, primarily based on inside Amazon papers, confirmed the corporate exerted important management over the stock of a few of the largest sellers, though Indian legal guidelines prohibit international gamers from holding stock of merchandise.
India’s commerce minister in August publicly slammed Amazon, saying its investments in India have typically been used to cowl its enterprise losses, including that such losses “scent of predatory pricing.”
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
