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THE ANGELS: Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon and the richest person in the world, has been called before the House Judiciary Committee to explain how the e-commerce giant uses data from third-party merchants.
Lawmakers, submitting the request, said a recent report on Amazon’s practices contradicted the company’s previous statements to the committee and “appears to be misleading and possibly criminally false or perjurious.”
An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the request for Bezos to testify.
In a letter dated May 1 and addressed to Bezos, House lawmakers wrote that they expected Bezos to appear voluntarily, but added that “we reserve the right to resort to a mandatory process if necessary.”
The letter cited a Wall street journal On April 23 it reports that Amazon employees, as a “standard operating procedure,” used confidential business information from third-party vendors on its platform to develop competing products. If that is true, House members wrote, “then the statements Amazon made to the Committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading and possibly criminally false or perjurious.”
In response to the WSJ report, Amazon said, “As we told the Wall street journal And explained in our testimony, we strictly prohibit employees from using vendor-specific non-public data to determine which private label products to launch. While we do not believe that these claims made in the daily the story is accurate, we take these allegations very seriously and have launched an internal investigation. “
Last year, the Democrats-led House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into Amazon’s powerful position in digital commerce, along with investigations by Apple, Facebook and Google. In testimony before the committee in July 2019, when asked about Amazon’s use of third-party vendor data, Amazon associate attorney general Nate Sutton said “[W]We do not use your individual data when making decisions to launch private labels. “
In September, the committee requested documents related to Amazon’s relationship with sellers, including Amazon’s use of third-party data. “Amazon has failed to properly produce in response to this request, and seven months after the original request, significant gaps persist,” lawmakers alleged in the May 1 letter.
The letter requesting that Bezos testify was signed by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, along with representatives from both sides of the aisle. However, Rep. Jim Jordan (R.-Ohio), a senior Republican member of the committee, did not sign it. In a statement through a representative, Jordan said Republicans have questions for Amazon, but that they “are wondering what the true motivations of judicial Democrats are” and whether Democrats want to divide companies like Amazon “simply because they are successful big companies. “
Amazon sales have skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the company has hired thousands of additional workers to handle demand. On April 30, the company reported net sales of US $ 75.5bil (RM324.46bil) for the first quarter of 2020, 26% more year-over-year. Bezos said Amazon expects to spend its first-quarter operating profit, $ 4bil (RM17.19bil) or more, on expenses related to the coronavirus in the second quarter. – Variety / Reuters
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