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Naver Corp. was formally charged by the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office on Thursday, Sept. 8. The South Korean online platform and tech firm was indicted for breach of the country's fair trade law.
The company was said to have abused its dominance in the market related to dealing with a real estate information partner. According to Yonhap News Agency, the prosecutor's office charged Naver over the accusations that it stopped a certain market information provider, which was not specified, from selling data to Kakao Corporation, the company's major rival in the industry. The alleged blocking happened between May 2015 and September 2017.
The case against Naver was first launched after the country's anti-trust watchdog, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), filed a criminal complaint in November of last year. The filing was requested by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups groups.
It was noted that the FTC already fined Naver in December 2020 after a probe revealed it had signed a deal with a market data company with the condition that the unnamed data firm would not provide market data information to Kakao. For this offense, the internet portal giant was penalized with a $767,000 fine which is about KRW1 billion.
The Small and Medium Enterprises ministry group asked the trade commission to go after Naver by continuing its criminal investigation. The request from SME came after reviews determined that Naver caused damage to the company as its potential contract with Kakao has been blocked.
In response to the charge, Naver said it would challenge the prosecution's decision against them. The company vowed to pursue a legal fight over the case. At any rate, prior to the indictment this week, the prosecutors raided the firm's headquarters in Seongnam, Seoul, and this was related to the abuse of market dominance allegations.
At that time, investigators and prosecutors were sent by the Fair Trade Investigation Department of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office to Naver's main office in Bundang, Gyeonggi, to investigate and see if there is proof that the company indeed violated the Fair Trade Act.
