Lotte Department Store, Lotte Mart and Homeplus were slapped with fines for illegally exploiting confidential business data of their subcontractors, the Fair Trade Commission said Thursday.

Lotte Department Store was ordered to pay 4.6 billion won ($4.3 million) in fines for forcibly requesting sales data from 60 small vendors that also have shops in its rival department stores.

The department store demanded extra sales or promotions from small vendors whose stores performed worse than counterparts at Shinsegae and Hyundai department stores, the antitrust watchdog said.

Lotte Mart was given a 330 million won fine for extracting 650 million won from 48 of its suppliers as expenses for a golf competition.

Homeplus was issued a 1.3 billion won fine for charging four suppliers with unwarranted personnel expenses worth about 1.7 billion won from.

(joowonc@heraldcorp.com)