Back in 2020, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that Amazon staff routinely used knowledge collected from third-party sellers to launch competing merchandise for the corporate’s private-label enterprise. The US Congress is already investigating the e-commerce big over that apply, and in response to The Journal, so is the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apparently, the SEC is trying into how Amazon disclosed its enterprise practices, together with how its staff used knowledge for its private-label brands. 

As The Journal notes, the SEC is answerable for regulating how publicly traded firms talk with their buyers. It can impose fines and different enforcement actions towards them if it finds that that they had did not disclose necessary enterprise info to buyers in a well timed method. As a part of the probe, which has reportedly been underway for over a 12 months now, the SEC requested for emails and different communications from a number of senior Amazon executives.

After the unique report from The Journal got here out, Amazon denied that it makes use of third-party vendor knowledge to launch competing merchandise. It launched an inside investigation of its private-label division, however it refused to offer Congress a duplicate of its outcomes. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee requested the Department of Justice to launch one other investigation into Amazon over a potential legal obstruction. 

The committee mentioned again then that the corporate refused to show over enterprise paperwork and communications “to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results.” As you’d count on, an Amazon spokesperson denied that is the case and referenced the “huge volume of information [the company has] provided over several years of good-faith cooperation with this investigation.”