An influential US congressional committee probing possible anti-competitive behaviour by Amazon has accused the ecommerce giant of obstructing its investigation and has referred the matter to the Department of Justice.
A bipartisan group of five members from the House Judiciary committee, including its chair, has called on US attorney-general Merrick Garland to investigate company executives for “potentially criminal conduct”.
“Amazon engaged in a pattern and practice of misleading conduct that suggests it was ‘acting with an improper purpose’ ‘to influence, obstruct, or impede’ the Committee’s investigation and inquiries,” the group said in a letter to the attorney-general dated Wednesday.
It added that the company “refused” to supply the necessary internal documents or communications.
“We therefore refer this matter to the Department to investigate whether Amazon or its executives obstructed Congress or violated other applicable federal laws,” it said.
Amazon has long been accused of using the data it has on sellers on its store to influence the creation of its own-brand products, such as those in the Amazon Basics range. Amazon’s associate general counsel Nate Sutton told the committee in July 2019 that the company did “not use any seller data to compete” with sellers.
In Wednesday’s letter, the committee said it had made repeated attempts to allow Amazon to provide internal documents or communications that backed up that defence, or demonstrated that its stated policies on the matter worked in practice.
“Amazon instead wrote letters describing how its policies are supposed to work in theory. When it came to the relevant question of how those policies worked in practice, Amazon refused to provide any relevant specifics,” it said.
In a statement, Amazon said: “There’s no factual basis for this, as demonstrated in the huge volume of information we’ve provided over several years of good-faith co-operation with this investigation.”
The letter cited numerous media reports that appeared to contradict Amazon’s statements and testimonies insisting it did not use the “troves of data” it had on third-party sellers to inform the creation of its own private-label products, giving itself an unfair advantage.
Other reporting cited in the letter claimed that Amazon gave preferential treatment to its own brands within its store’s search results, something the company has also denied.
It added it had corroborated the press reports, which Amazon has described as inaccurate, with its own investigation, saying it had “uncovered similar evidence from former Amazon employees, as well as current and former sellers”.
The DoJ told the Financial Times it had received the letter and would review it.
The letter did not name specific executives, but the committee’s 16-month-long investigation had heard from some of the company’s most senior figures, including founder and former chief executive Jeff Bezos, who testified in front of the group in July 2020.
The probe, which also looked at antitrust concerns at Apple, Google and Facebook, culminated in a damning 449-page October 2020 report that said the Big Tech groups picked the “winners and losers” in the US economy due to their immense size and influence.
Amazon is the only one of the four tech companies probed by the committee to be accused of illegal efforts to obstruct the investigation.
“Executives continued to thwart our efforts to uncover the truth about their business practices,” the group of members said in a joint statement. “Amazon and its executives must be held accountable for this behaviour.”
