A Home committee on Wednesday requested the Justice Division to research Amazon and a few of its executives for prison obstruction of a congressional investigation that included the e-commerce big.
In a letter to Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland, members of the Home Judiciary committee accused the corporate of obstructing its 16-month antitrust investigation by refusing to show over info and mendacity about the way it handled third-party sellers on its platform.
“All through the investigation and in follow-up inquiries, senior executives at Amazon engaged in a sample and follow of deceptive conduct earlier than the committee,” a bipartisan group of lawmakers together with the Home Judiciary committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, mentioned within the letter to the Justice Division. “Amazon and its executives have to be held accountable for this conduct.”
Throughout its investigation, which was opened in 2019, the Home panel’s antitrust subcommittee targeted on whether or not the corporate used knowledge about its clients to advance the sale of its personal private-label merchandise over these of third-party distributors. The lawmakers of their letter mentioned Amazon executives, together with a lawyer who testified earlier than the committee, repeatedly denied that the corporate used buyer knowledge to hurt competitors.
However The Wall Avenue Journal and The Markup reported later that former staff and inside paperwork revealed that the corporate used knowledge to offer Amazon merchandise an unfair enhance over opponents and that the corporate additionally used its rating methods to characteristic firm merchandise over these of third-party sellers.
“Amazon was caught in a lie,” the lawmakers wrote of their letter.
Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for Amazon, mentioned in a press release on Wednesday that the lawmaker’s issues have been unfounded.
“There’s no factual foundation for this, as demonstrated within the large quantity of knowledge we’ve offered over a number of years of excellent religion cooperation with this investigation,” she mentioned.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Division mentioned the company had obtained the letter and was reviewing it.
The letter intensifies strain on federal regulators to rein within the energy of Amazon. The Home committee accused Amazon of abusing its place in on-line commerce to hurt opponents that depend on the web platform to promote items. The panel’s antitrust subcommittee additionally accused Amazon and different tech giants, together with Fb, Google and Apple, of abusing their monopoly energy and known as for sweeping modifications to antitrust legal guidelines to curtail the dominance of the Silicon Valley giants.
The Federal Commerce Fee opened an antitrust investigation into Amazon about two years in the past, and the company can also be reviewing the corporate’s proposed $8.45 billion merger with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Hollywood studio. Earlier than turning into F.T.C. chair, Lina Khan was identified for a paper she wrote for the Yale Regulation Journal known as “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which argued that even when it provided extra comfort and decrease costs for shoppers, the corporate had abused its dominance.
