US Lawmakers: Amazon Lied About Using Seller Data to Make Competing Products
A House committee is asking the US Justice Department to investigate Amazon for allegedly lying to Congress about whether the company uses data on third-party merchants to develop competing products.
The House Judiciary Committee today sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, alerting him about Amazon’s “potentially criminal conduct.”
Under the US Code, it’s against the law to influence, obstruct, or impede any proceeding before Congress. But the committee says Amazon did just that during a 16-month investigation into the e-commerce giant. “Throughout the investigation and in follow-up inquiries, senior executives at Amazon engaged in a pattern and practice of misleading behavior before the Committee,” wrote a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, which included Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), David Cicilline (D-RI), and Ken Buck (R-CO).
“The Committee extended multiple opportunities for Amazon to clarify these misconceptions, yet executives continued to thwart our efforts to uncover the truth about their business practices,” the lawmakers added. “Amazon and its executives must be held accountable for this behavior.”
The House Judiciary Committee claims the criminal conduct started in 2019 when an Amazon lawyer testified to US lawmakers that the company never used “any seller data” concerning the third-party merchants on Amazon's e-commerce platform to create competing products. Amazon has several branded product lines on its platform, including Amazon Basics, which often sell goods at lower prices than third-party vendors.
Despite the rebuke, reporting from The Wall Street Journal found that Amazon actually did use seller data to develop such products, citing interviews with 20 former employees. In July 2020, former
Read more on pcmag.com
