The American financial markets regulator, the SEC, is investigating the practices of the online sales giant Amazon in handling merchant data and their possible use to create its own products, according to the wall street journal.
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Asked by AFP, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Amazon did not respond on Wednesday. In April 2020, the Wall Street Journal claimed, based on the testimonies of more than twenty former Amazon employees, that the e-commerce giant had used, without authorization, the data of sellers who used its platform. Amazon had used it to develop its own products, based on trends in sales made by third parties on its site, according to the financial daily.
Survey since 2019
The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee has been investigating Amazon’s practices since 2019 and heard, in this context, several leaders of the group, including, in 2020, the then CEO and founder of the group, Jeff Bezos. At the beginning of March, members of this commission asked the Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, to open his own investigation to determine whether the Seattle (Washington) company had obstructed the work of parliamentarians and violated the law. They accused a company executive of lying during his 2019 sworn hearing by claiming that Amazon does not use any data from third-party sellers. According to the commission, while Amazon has refuted these allegations, it has not provided any supporting documents, despite repeated requests from elected officials.
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