China fines e-commerce giant Alibaba, others for disclosure breech

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has hit technology giants Alibaba and Tencent with fines for failing to comply with transaction disclosure rules.

The rules form part of anti-monopoly laws, the SAMR said on Sunday.

Numerous other companies were also named as having violated the rules in the same announcement.

The SAMR released a list of 28 unreported deals that violated the rules.

Five involved units of Alibaba, including a 2021 purchase of equity in one of its subsidiaries, the Youku Tudou streaming platform.

Tencent was involved in 12 of the transactions on the SAMR list.

The firms could not immediately be reached for comment.

China’s tech sector has been one of the main targets of a crackdown on monopolistic practices that started in late 2020.

Under the anti-monopoly law, the maximum potential fine in each case is 500,000 renminbi (US$74,688).

Reuters/Hauwa Abu