Chinese regulators have hit top e-commerce giant Alibaba with a record 18.23 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) fine for violating anti-monopoly laws, it was announced on Saturday, April 10. The fine, the largest anti-monopoly fine ever rolled out by Chinese authorities, was imposed after an investigation revealed an “exclusive dealing agreement” that violated Chinese monopoly laws. The fine is equal to 4% of Alibaba’s sales in 2019, the Xinhua news agency said in a report on Saturday. The strongly worded statement said the company “abused” its dominant market position since 2015. Founded by China’s most famous entrepreneur, Jack Ma, once a schoolteacher who became a multi-billionaire, Alibaba is possibly the world’s biggest e-commerce company with hundreds of millions of users and billions of dollars in turnover – according to Bloomberg, it is Asia’s “most valuable corporation”. Its three main sites Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com host millions of merchants and businesses. But in December, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation started an investigation on Alibaba Group for alleged monopoly conduct including implementing an ‘exclusive dealing agreement’,” Xinhua, China’s official news agency, had then announced.
China comes down hard on Alibaba group, fines $2.78bn
