Germany’s antitrust control body, the Federal Cartel Office, is investigating Amazon for allegedly abusing its dominant market position by setting costs for parts sold through third-party stores on the site.
The investigation opposed to Amazon was opened through the cartel’s workplace in April after the company won a series of lawsuits on Amazon that sought to influence the costs set through third-party vendors.
As considerations of abusive costs arose at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was reported that Amazon began blocking some distributors to set the maximum costs, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.
“Lately we are investigating whether and how Amazon influences the prices of external investors in the market. Amazon is not a worthwhile driver. This applies even now.” The head of the antitrust agency, Andreas Mundt, told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Mundt added that Amazon’s possible abuse of its dominant position “comes naturally in such investigations,” noting that the company cooperates with the investigation.
An Amazon spokesman told Deutsche Welle that its systems “are designed to take action against abusive prices,” while denying the charge of market abuse.
While German researchers focus on Amazon’s resolve to block maximum values through sellers, the company faces research to allow values to increase in Italy. In March, Italy’s antitrust control agency began investigating Amazon and its rival eBay for the alleged excessive increase in the value of products such as hand sanitizers and masking of the coronavirus crisis.
In his annual letter to shareholders, sent in April, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company had suspended more than 6,000 seller accounts on its international platform for employment value for essential pieces of the pandemic. He also added that Amazon had disposed of more than 500,000 classified ads from its online page for misuse. However, the company did not specify whether any of the classified classified advertisements or distributors were from Germany. In the United States, corporations pushed Congress to pass a law that would make fraud illegal in times of national crisis. The company’s dual role, either as a store and as a market for third-party distributors, has clashed with regulators around the world. Amazon has been accused of using its control over the search effects on its site and the knowledge it collects from third parties to compete directly with them. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that the European Union could simply publish formal antitrust lawsuits that oppose Amazon because of its reliance on third-party distributors. Earlier, in April, U.S. lawmakers. They asked Amazon to explain whether it had lied to Congress about its strategies opposing competition on its platform, employing the company to use the knowledge generated through external distributors to expand competing products. Last year, Amazon’s deputy attorney general Nathan Sutton testified before the House Judicial Subcommittee on Antitrust Laws, saying the company “did not use the knowledge of individual sellers to compete directly with them.”
German control body launches investigation into Amazon: (Deutsche Welle)
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I’m a Reporter for Breaking News in Forbes, with a policy of generating vital coverage and commercial news. Graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in business and
I’m a Reporter for Breaking News in Forbes, with a policy of generating vital coverage and commercial news. Graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in business and economic journalism in 2019. He worked as a journalist in New Delhi, India, from 2014 to 2018. Do you have any advice? Direct messages are open on Twitter @SiladityaRay or email me at siladitya@protonmail.com.