India’s monetary crime company has raided workplaces of some sellers working Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart in an investigation into alleged violations of overseas funding guidelines, two authorities sources mentioned on Thursday.
The searches come weeks after Reuters reported India’s antitrust physique had discovered the 2 firms and their sellers violated competitors legal guidelines by giving choice to pick sellers on their platforms. Each firms have maintained they adjust to Indian legal guidelines.
One senior authorities supply mentioned raids had been being carried out in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, however didn’t give names of sellers whose workplaces had been being raided.
“The raids on sellers of Amazon and Flipkart is part of ED’s probe … for alleged violations of overseas change legal guidelines,” mentioned 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 mentioned he had no quick remark.
The raids are the newest 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 overseas funding legal guidelines that strictly regulate multi-brand retail and prohibit such firms to working a market for sellers.
The primary authorities supply on Thursday mentioned it was conducting the newest searches on the observations of the antitrust physique in its just lately concluded investigation of the 2 firms.
These Amazon and Flipkart antitrust investigation stories 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, based mostly on inside Amazon papers, confirmed the corporate exerted vital management over the stock of a few of the largest sellers, despite the fact that Indian legal guidelines prohibit overseas 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 workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
