Preferential treatment case: CCI raids sellers of Amazon, Flipkart

The investigative arm of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has carried out search-and-seizure operations at multiple premises linked to two sellers of Amazon.com, Inc, in connection with an investigation launched against e-commerce players preferential over treatment, said two people privy to the development.

- PEERZADA ABRAR & SHRIMI CHOUDHARY

CCI is assessing the anticompetitive conduct against seven/eight sellers associated with e-commerce players, they said.

The director-general (D-G) of CCI is empowered to carry out searches like other law enforcement agencies in accordance with the direction of the commission.

In the matter, a team of officials from the D-G office, local police, and forensic experts have visited multiple locations in Delhi and Bengaluru. Officials are learnt to have questioned key employees of the seller present at the premises. They are learnt to have also taken possession of certain documents, digital data, servers, etc from the search site, said people in the know.

CCI searches typically continue for three to four days.

According to sources, the raids were conducted on the offices of Cloudtail and Appario, both sellers of e-commerce giant Amazon, as well as the seller offices of Walmart-owned Flipkart.

Without commenting on the specific case, an official said that the competition law provides a very robust framework to assess anti-competitive conduct, which enables CCI to examine, inter alia, instances of preferential treatment by platforms possessing market power and issue suitable remedies to address competition concerns in case the infringement is found to be established.