LONDON Reuters - Five members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee sent to Amazon.com Inc's chief executive Sunday and accused the company's top executives, including the founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying about it about its business practices.
The letter also states that the committee is considering whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate. Asked to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the letter followed a Reuters investigation last week that showed that the company was following a systematic campaign of copying products and rigging search results in India to boost sales of its own brands - practices Amazon has denied engaged in. In July, Bezos succeeded Jassy, a longtime Amazon executive.
The letter states that credible reporting in the Reuters story and recent articles in several other news outlets directly contradicts the sworn testimony and representations of Amazon CEOs including former CEO Jeffrey Bezos. At best, this reporting confirms that Amazon's representatives misled the committee. At worst, it shows that they may have lied to Congress in possible violation of federal criminal law. Reuters has reviewed a copy of the letter.
In response, an Amazon spokesperson issued a statement that says: Amazon's executives did not mislead the committee and we have denied and sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question. It added: As we have previously stated, we have an Amazon Private Label policy which goes beyond that of any other retailer's policy that we are aware of, that prohibits the use of individual seller data to develop internal products. We investigate any allegations that this policy may have been violated and take appropriate action. Since 2019, the House Judiciary Committee has investigated competition in digital markets, including how Amazon uses private seller data on its platform and whether the company unfairly favors its own products.
In sworn testimony before the Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee last year, Bezos said the company prohibits its employees from using data on individual sellers to benefit its own private-label product lines. In another hearing in 2019 Nate Sutton, Amazon's associate counsel, testified that the company does not use such data to create its own branded products or modify its search results to benefit them.
Asked during the 2019 congressional hearing whether Amazon alters algorithms to direct consumers to its own goods, Sutton replied: The algorithms are optimized to predict what customers want to buy regardless of the seller. The lawmakers' letter gives Jassy the final opportunity to provide evidence to confirm the company's prior testimony and statements. It also notes that it is illegal to knowingly and willfully make statements that are materially false, conceal a material fact, or otherwise provide false documentation in response to a congressional investigation. It gives the CEO until Nov. 1 to provide a sworn response to clarify how Amazon uses individual non-public seller data to develop and market its own product line and how Amazon's search results favor those products.
It also requests copies of all documents mentioned in the Reuters investigation on Oct. 13.
We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record and provide the Committee with sworn, accurate, and accurate answers to this request as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate.
The probe by Amazon is based on thousands of pages internal documents, including emails, strategy papers and business plans. They showed that, at least in India, Amazon has a formal, clandestine policy of manipulating search results to favor Amazon's own products as well as copying other sellers' goods and that at least two senior CEOs saw it.
In response to the Reuters report, Amazon said: "We believe these claims are factual inaccurate and unsubstantiated. The company was not elaborate. The company said the way it shows search results doesn't favor private products.
The lawmakers' letter also cites other news stories in the Markup, Wall Street Journal and Capitol Forum about Amazon's private-brand products and use of seller data.
The letter's sharp wording ratchet up the rhetoric between Washington and Big Tech. Companies including Amazon, Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc. have been under growing scrutiny in Washington, Europe and other parts of the world, fuelled by concerns among regulators, lawmakers and consumer groups that the firms have too much power and are engaging in unfair practices that hurt other businesses.
The lawmakers' letter was signed by a bipartisan group and included the judiciary committee chairman, Democrat Jerrold Nadler, and four members of the antitrust subcommittee chair Prof. David Cicilline, vice-chair Pramila Jayapal and Republicans Ken Buck and Matt Gaetz.
On Wednesday, after the publication of the Reuters investigation, U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren called on Amazon to break up the firm. In India, a group representing millions of brick and mortar retailers urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action against Amazon.