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House Accuses Amazon of ‘Potentially Criminal Conduct’ During 16-Month Investigation

Bipartisan members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland alerting the Department of Justice to potentially criminal conduct by Amazon and its senior executives. The letter states that Amazon engaged in a “pattern and practice” of misleading conduct reportedly designed to “influence, obstruct or impede” the committee’s 16-month investigation into competition in digital markets.

The committee relayed several issues with Amazon’s testimony: In July 2019, Amazon’s Associate General Counsel for Competition, Nate Sutton, testified under oath about Amazon’s use of third-party seller data in its private label business. He stated that “we do not use any seller data for — to compete with them.” The committee cited “credible investigative reporting demonstrated the opposite,” including in-depth reports from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and The Markup.

Amazon stated that these investigative reports were based on “key misunderstandings and speculation,” leading to “inaccurate conclusions.” However, the committee found evidence from former Amazon employees, as well as former and current sellers, that corroborated the reports’ claims. The committee stated that Amazon has attempted to “clean up the inaccurate testimony through ever-shifting explanations of its internal policies and denials of the investigative reports.”

Finally, the committee said that it “gave Amazon multiple opportunities to correct the record, but Amazon refused to turn over any business documents or communications that would corroborate its claims or correct the record.” Instead, Amazon reportedly “wrote letters describing how its policies are supposed to work in theory” but “when it came to the relevant question of how those policies worked in practice, Amazon refused to provide any relevant specifics, such as internal audits or investigations.”

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Five bipartisan members of the House Judiciary Committee issued a joint statement on their letter: “Last Congress, the Judiciary Committee conducted an extensive, bipartisan investigation into competition in digital markets,” the statement reads. “Throughout the investigation and in follow-up inquiries, senior executives at Amazon engaged in a pattern and practice of misleading behavior before the Committee. 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. Amazon and its executives must be held accountable for this behavior. That is why we are referring this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon obstructed Congress or violated other federal laws. We look forward to hearing from the Department on this important matter.”

A full timeline of the Amazon investigation, including supporting facts for the House Judiciary Committee case, is available here.

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