Amazon India spent ~8.5K cr in legal fee in ’18-20

US e-commerce giant Amazon, which is said to be investigating alleged bribes paid by its legal representatives in India, spent ~8,546 crore or $1.2 billion in legal and professional expenses during 2018-20 in the country, sources said.

Sources aware of the firm's public account filings said entities of Amazon – including Amazon Retail India, Amazon Seller Services, Amazon Transportation Services, Amazon Wholesale (India), and Amazon Internet Services (AWS) – paid ~3,420 crore in India during 2018-19 and ~5,126 crore during 201920 towards legal fees.

While initially Amazon had declined to comment on PTI'S query on the matter, later in the evening, an Amazon spokesperson said a line item from its statutory filings on legal fees has been misrepresented.

The line item is “actually termed legal and professional expenses that includes not just the legal costs but also the costs related to other professional services such as outsourcing, tax consultants, customer research, logistic support services, merchant onboarding services, customer service cost, etc”, the spokesperson said.