A bipartisan group of lawmakers is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of cheating lawmakers during a recent antitrust investigation.
In a March 9 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, House Judicial Committee leaders say Amazon has refused to provide commercial records detailing how it uses data belonging to third-party sellers on its platform and accusing executives to make “false and misleading.” statements “in previous testimony before the court. This involves” potentially criminal conduct “on the part of the company and some senior executives, whom the committee does not name, the letter says.
Durant an investigation on Amazon and three other Big Tech companies, Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel, told Congress that the company does not “use individual seller data to compete directly with them.”
Since then, however, media reports have uncovered numerous examples of Amazon appearing to do so, lawmakers allege. The Wall Street Journal in 2020 revealed that Amazon accessed sales data from a popular luggage organizer and then launched a competing product, while Reuters and The Markup reports found that Amazon ranks its own products. higher than competing merchandise in searches, even when ranked third. -Party products have better reviews and more sales.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon then he said Congress that Amazon had access to data in categories where there were only two sellers, seemingly contradicting the company’s previous claims. But investigators were hampered because Amazon, while denying it lied, refused to provide evidence to Congress, House lawmakers said.
“After Amazon got caught up in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it slowed down the Committee’s efforts to find out the truth,” thy said in the letter.
“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” they added.
Amazon says it is cooperating
In a statement, Amazon denied the Judicial Committee’s claims. “There is no real basis for this, as evidenced by the huge amount of information we have provided over several years of good faith cooperation with this research,” the company said.
The Athena Coalition, a labor advocacy group opposed to Amazon, praised the decision by lawmakers to ask the Justice Department to investigate. “Amazon’s control over our economy and democracy must be broken. We applaud federal lawmakers for starting to hold Amazon accountable and urging more federal action to expand and enforce antitrust law and protect workers from its exploitation, “he said in a statement.
Last week, lawmakers also called on Amazon to potentially fire workers illegally and urged federal regulators to look into the company’s assistance policy.
It is very rare for companies to face criminal charges, although federal prosecutors have recently done so. suggested they are willing to take criminal cases for alleged monopolies.
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