Amazon had said it would provide an “Appropriate” executive to be available for the US House of Representative Judiciary Committee in order to testify about allegations related to how the company uses third-party sellers’ data. The panel had initially called on the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos to testify but the e-commerce giant wrote in a blog post on Friday didn’t commit to a specific person or consideration for who could eventually testify.
“We have been working with the Committee in good faith for nearly a year to provide answers and information, and we remain prepared to make the appropriate Amazon executive available to the Committee to address these issues,” Amazon said in the blog post here
According to a report made by the Wall Street Journal last month showed that the company used data from it’s third-party sellers to create competing products. In a letter sent to the company’s boss, Jeff Bezos this month sighed by both the Democratic and Republican members of the panel, U.S. lawmakers referred to the April 23rd WSJ report as saying “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.”
At issue were statements by Amazon’s associate general counsel, Nate Sutton, who denied under oath last July that Amazon used sensitive business information from independent sellers on its platform to develop products for Amazon to sell.
Amazon had also affirm previously that such practices would violate its policies and so sent a letter to the panel on Friday in response to the Committee’s May 1st letter and reiterated that any allegations that there was such a policy breach would be investigated internally by the company.