Report: Bezos may testify on Big Tech, but with other CEOs
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is willing to testify to the congressional panel investigating the market dominance of Big Tech, but along with other tech industry CEOs, lawyers for the company say, according to a published report Monday.
Last month, leaders of the House Judiciary Committee from both parties asked Bezos to testify to address possible misleading statements by the company on its competition practices. They held out the threat of a subpoena if he didn’t agree voluntarily to appear.
Amazon is willing to cooperate with the probe and to make “the appropriate executive” available to testify — including Bezos with other tech CEOs at a hearing this summer, an attorney for Amazon told the lawmakers in a letter, The Wall Street Journal reported.
However, the letter also said Amazon would first want to discuss timing and format of Bezos’s possible testimony and the committee’s pending requests for documents, according to The Journal.
Amazon.com Inc. used sensitive, confidential information about sellers on its marketplace, their products and transactions to develop its own competing products, The Journal has previously reported. An Amazon executive denied such a practice in statements at a committee hearing last July, saying the company has a formal policy against it.
If the news report is accurate, Amazon’s statements to the committee “appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false” or constituting perjury, said a letter to Bezos signed by the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and others. “Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, we reserve the right to resort to compulsory process if necessary.”
Spokesmen for the committee had no immediate comment Monday on the Amazon...
