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China has imposed a record fine on online retailer Alibaba for abusing its monopoly position.
The group had exploited its dominant position for years, announced the Chinese competition authority on Saturday and hummed the Amazon competitor to pay the equivalent of 2.3 billion euros (18 billion yuan).
It is the highest antitrust fine ever imposed in the People's Republic and a sign that the country is pulling the reins.
Alibaba accepted the sentence and stated that it would follow the guidelines.
“We're going to do this openly and together,” wrote CEO Daniel Zhang in a message to the employees that was available to the Reuters news agency.
"Let's get better and start over as a unit." In addition to the fine of about four percent of Alibaba's sales in China in 2019, the competition authority ordered the group to "thoroughly improve" internal regulatory monitoring and to comply with consumer rights.
Alibaba founder criticized regulation
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The agency announced its investigation in December.
Shortly before, the Chinese supervisors had thwarted the payment processor Ant, whose major shareholder Alibaba is its planned $ 37 billion IPO.
They announced that they would monitor the lucrative online lending business more closely.
At first Ant did not see himself up to these requirements.
It would have been the world's largest IPO.
For years, the authorities had barely regulated the Chinese financial platforms, but they tightened the thumbscrews for fear of looser lending and growing loan defaults.
In addition, Alibaba founder Jack Ma did not take pleasure in criticizing the regulation in China.