TCA's Samsung Decision: Is the Approach to Deleting Digital Data During On-Dawn Raid Changing?
- Nuri Melih İnce
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
The obstruction of on-dawn raids by deleting digital data during dawn raids conducted by the Turkish Competition Authority (“the TCA”) has been one of the most significant competition law issues in recent years. Indeed, in many of its past decisions, the Turkish Competition Board (“the Board”) has strictly interpreted the deletion of data from email and messaging applications after an on-dawn raids has begun as an act of obstructing the dawn raid.
In the TCA's decision dated April 10, 2025, numbered 25-14/330-157, the reasoning for which was recently published (“Samsung decision”), an approach contrary to that taken in many previous Board decisions is evident.
In this context, the Samsung decision found that after the on-dawn raid at Samsung Electronics İstanbul Pazarlama ve Tic. Ltd. Şti. commenced on March 4, 2025, some employees left the “Knox Teams” groups, and after the employees left, these groups were automatically deleted from the devices.
On the other hand, the decision states that the on-dawn raid was not obstructed, as the examination of the mobile devices of other employees in the groups resulted in access to the correspondence in the relevant groups, and no findings and/or documents related to the subject of the investigation were found in said correspondence. Notably, the decision was adopted by a majority vote of four to three, and the dissenting members of the Board pointed out in their dissenting opinions that similar cases examined in the past had resulted in decisions going in the opposite direction.
Both the Board and administrative court case law accepted that the deletion of digital data after the dawn raid began constituted evidence tampering, thereby obstructing the dawn raid. Although it may be early to state that the approach outlined in the Board's Samsung decision points to a paradigm shift, it should be noted that the aforementioned decision has taken its place among the Board's significant decisions.
