Alibaba to pay 600m dollars to settle US probe into illegal drug sales
The US Justice Department announced that Alibaba and its US payment processor will pay $600 million to resolve allegations that they failed to prevent roughly 80,000 illegal sales on their e-commerce platforms between 2016 and 2024. Prosecutors said the transactions — involving chemicals, pharmaceuticals and counterfeiting equipment — were worth more than $200 million.
Alibaba admitted it failed to prevent the sales and agreed to accept responsibility for the actions of its officers and employees, while committing to enhanced compliance programs. Internal documents cited in the case showed employees had flagged inadequate controls and illegal listings. The company framed the settlement as the product of “a thorough regulatory process” carried out with its “full cooperation.”
For Alibaba, the deal removes a legal overhang in a market it still wants access to, but the admission of fault and the record of internal warnings give US regulators a documented basis for scrutiny of how large marketplaces police what moves through them.