The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection conducted extensive searches at Allegro's offices in Poznań and Warsaw on Thursday. The actions, carried out with police assistance, are related to suspicions that the leader of Polish e-commerce has violated competition rules. The investigation focuses on the platform's logistics practices, which may have improperly promoted its own delivery methods at the expense of external carriers and sellers using the service.
Raids in Two Cities
Authorities secured documentation and data at Allegro offices in Poznań and Warsaw as part of UOKiK's operation.
Suspicion of Favoritism
The regulator is investigating whether the platform promotes its own delivery methods at the expense of competition in a way that violates market rules.
Stock Market and Company Reaction
Allegro declares compliance with the law, but reports of police entry caused concern among investors.
Police officers along with inspectors from the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection entered Allegro's key locations on Thursday morning, including the main headquarters at the Pixel complex in Poznań and offices in Warsaw. This is a radical step in the initiated explanatory proceedings aimed at verifying whether the e-commerce giant is not abusing its dominant market position. The subject of the investigation are mechanisms favoring its own logistics solutions, including parcel lockers and private-label courier services, which may have harmed the interests of independent transport companies and limited consumer choice. The decision to involve police during the inspection suggests that the regulator feared the possibility of hiding or destroying key evidence, including digital data and algorithms controlling offer display. The President of UOKiK has broad investigative powers in situations where there is suspicion of systemic market order violations. The current actions result from numerous complaints from business partners who point to non-transparent criteria for positioning shipments handled by the platform's systems. State service interventions at technology corporation headquarters recall the high-profile raids on Google and Apple offices in Western Europe in the past decade, which initiated a global debate about digital monopoly. In an official statement, Allegro confirmed the searches and declared full cooperation with the control authorities. Company representatives emphasize that their actions comply with Polish and EU law, and all platform modifications serve to improve customer service standards. However, market analysts note that this is another explanatory proceedings against the company, which previously faced allegations of favoring its own official store. If gathered evidence confirms the suspicions, the company faces an antitrust penalty of enormous scale, which immediately caused nervousness on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.