Stay connected
Amazon is under investigation through the German government for allegedly abusing its market position during the coronavirus pandemic.
The investigation, conducted through the German Federal Cartel Office, examines Amazon’s citations with third-party distributors on its platform. It started around April and comes after the Cartel Office won several complaints.
A regulatory spokesman told CNBC that it was “not a personal platform to be a valuable regulator or a valuable policy.” Amazon is employing “unknown mechanisms” for distributors on its platform, they added.
Amazon did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment, however, on March 23, Amazon said in a blog post that abusive pricing “has no place” on its platform.
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was the first to report on the investigation.”Lately we are investigating whether and how Amazon influences store costs in the market,” Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview.
The regulator told CNBC that Amazon provided a message after asking the e-commerce giant several questions. The answers in it are being reviewed lately.
Germany is Amazon’s largest market after the United States.
The Cartel Office, which has the strength to fine corporations for heaps of millions of euros, declined to comment on the length of the investigation.
This comes after Amazon blocked some stores for allegedly inflating their costs at the start of the pandemic. For example, there have been cases of external Amazon dealers having higher parts costs such as hand sanitizers and masks.
Amazon has taken strong action against several vendors, leaving others like Noah Colvin, a Tennessee resident, sitting in more than 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and with nowhere to sell them.
German research is the latest in a number of disorders that Amazon has faced since coronavirus worldwide.
For example, Amazon has faced coronavirus-related deaths, protests, and its reaction to the pandemic has been more strongly criticized than that of e-commerce giants such as Alibaba and JD.com in China.
Warehouse staff in Germany went on strike in June after staff at several logistics centers tested positive for coronavirus. The movements took place in six of the company’s warehouses across the country over two days. German union Verdi said Amazon endangers the lives of warehouse staff.
At the time, an Amazon spokesperson said: “We strongly that our affiliates do not spread the virus in the tables given the physically powerful security measures we have implemented.Unlike others, every time a diagnosis is shown, we alert each and every one to the site.Array employees get a direct message indicating when the user with the diagnosis shown was last in the building.”
Do you have any confidential information? We want to hear from you.
Sign up for loose newsletters and get more CNBC in your inbox
Get it in your inbox and more information about our services.
© 2020 CNBC LLC. All rights are reserved. An NBCUniversal department
Knowledge is a real-time snapshot: data is delayed for at least 15 minutes. Global industry and monetary news, inventory quotes and market knowledge and analysis.
Data also by