America’s second largest company Amazon ran into more anti-trust issues as Italian regulators slapped the online retailer with a $1.3 billion fine for encouraging its seller to use its logistics services.
The fine comes as a new addition to Amazon’s long history of anti-trust troubles.
In November Amazon sought to settle EU anti-trust probes which could lead to a maximum fine of 10% of the company’s turnover, the equivalent of $38.6 billion of its 2020 revenue.
In June an Indian court rejected a plea by Amazon to end an anti-trust investigation involving the promotion of select third-party sellers.
In May District of Colombia Attorney General Karl Racine sued Amazon in the US over allegations that the company maintained monopoly power through pricing contracts with third party sellers.
In March the authors of a white paper for the American Booksellers Association noted: “Amazon has used exclusionary, anti-competitive pricing schemes to gain market power and illegally monopolize the e-commerce retail market, specifically, the first-party online retail market, the third-party e-commerce marketplace market, the web services market, and the third-party logistics services market.”
Analysts expressed concern that the Italian fine could well represent part of a growing willingness to rein in Amazon’s dominant market position.
By Feike de Jong
