Members of the House Judiciary Committee called on Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to testify in an antitrust investigation of his company, threatening to subpoena him if he doesn’t comply.
“If these allegations are true, then Amazon exploited its role as the largest online marketplace in the U.S. to appropriate the sensitive commercial data of individual marketplace sellers and then used that data to compete directly with those sellers,” the lawmakers wrote.
Amazon responded to the claims in the report by saying that their employees’ actions were in violation of company policy, while the report claimed some staff said using competitors’ data as described above was “standard operating procedure,” others called it a “common practice,” and still others said policies “weren’t uniformly enforced.”
An Amazon executive denied such a practice in statements at a committee hearing last July, referring to the same company policies that prohibit such actions.
The lawmakers contend that in the event that the news report is true, then the statements made by the Amazon executive may amount to a crime.
“If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the Committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious,” they wrote.
They then said “it is vital to the Committee” that Bezos come and testify, preferably of his own accord.
“Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, we reserve the right to resort to compulsory process if necessary,” they wrote.
Amazon spokesmen had no immediate comment.
“Of course our Members have questions for Amazon and want to get answers for the American people. But we wonder what Judiciary Democrats’ true motivations are,“ said Russell Dye, according to Politico. ”Earlier this year, they said companies like Amazon should not exist and should be broken up simply because they are large successful businesses.”
“Amazon’s capacity for data collection is like a brick-and-mortar retailer attaching a camera to every customer’s forehead,” he said, arguing that the data Amazon can access poses a severe competitive threat to traditional retailers.
The Judiciary antitrust subcommittee led by Cicilline has been conducting a sweeping investigation of Big Tech companies and their impact on competition and consumers, focusing on Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission also are pursuing antitrust probes of the four companies, and state attorneys general from both parties have undertaken investigations of Google and Facebook.
