The sanction against Ant Group was 7,123 million yuan (984 million dollars) and that of the Trencent subsidiary reached 3,000 million yuan (USD 415 million).
Ant Group operates Alipay, the world’s largest digital payment platform, with hundreds of millions of users in China and other countries.
In recent years, it has expanded its activities into loans, investments, and insurance for consumers and small businesses.
The authorities of the communist country viewed with suspicion the weight that this private company gained in the financial system, without being subject to the same regulations as banks.
“Taking into account the illegal and irregular actions of Ant Group and its subsidiaries in recent years (…), fines of 7.123 million yuan were imposed on them,” the Financial Markets Regulation Commission (CSRC) said in a statement. .
The procedures concerned above all banking and consumer protection activities, he specified.
Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba, said in a statement that it “will comply with the terms of the fine earnestly and sincerely.”
The central bank of China announced for its part a fine of almost 3,000 million yuan to Tenpay, a subsidiary of the Tencent group and rival of Ant in the online payment sector.
The sanction includes the confiscation of illegal income of 556 million yuan.
In a statement, Tencent Chairman Pony Ma said Tenpay has already implemented a specific “rectification” directive and that Friday’s announcement “does not have a material adverse impact on the operations and financial position of the group as a whole.” .
The CSRC indicated that “currently, most of the outstanding problems in the financial sector of the companies that have the platforms have been rectified.”
“The work focus of the financial management department has changed from promoting a rectification of the financial businesses of companies that have platforms to normalized supervision,” he added.-
Ant Group prepared at the end of 2020 one of the largest IPOs in history, for close to 34,000 million dollars, but the authorities stopped the operation 48 hours before.
Some analysts attribute the suspension of that operation to a speech in which Alibaba founder Jack Ma criticized Chinese regulators in 2020.
The following month, Alibaba, of which Ant Group was the financial subsidiary, was investigated for hindering competition and fined $2.75 billion.
These measures marked the beginning of a tightening of regulations and a crackdown on the technology sector in China.
But in a sign that the crackdown is easing, authorities said in December that Ant won approval to raise 10.5 billion yuan for its finance arm.
