A House panel calls for a criminal investigation into Amazon.

A Home committee on Wednesday requested the Justice Division to research Amazon and a few of its executives for legal obstruction of a congressional investigation that included the e-commerce large.

In a letter to Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland, members of the Home Judiciary committee accused the corporate of obstructing its 16-month antitrust investigation by refusing to show over data and mendacity about the way it handled third-party sellers on its platform.

“All through the investigation and in follow-up inquiries, senior executives at Amazon engaged in a sample and follow of deceptive habits earlier than the committee,” a bipartisan group of lawmakers together with the Home Judiciary committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, mentioned within the letter to the Justice Division. “Amazon and its executives should be held accountable for this habits.”

Throughout its investigation, which was opened in 2019, the Home panel’s antitrust subcommittee targeted on whether or not the corporate used knowledge about its clients to advance the sale of its personal private-label merchandise over these of third-party distributors. The lawmakers of their letter mentioned Amazon executives, together with a lawyer who testified earlier than the committee, repeatedly denied that the corporate used buyer knowledge to hurt competitors.

However The Wall Avenue Journal and The Markup reported later that former workers and inner paperwork revealed that the corporate used knowledge to provide Amazon merchandise an unfair increase over opponents and that the corporate additionally used its rating methods to function firm merchandise over these of third-party sellers.

“Amazon was caught in a lie,” the lawmakers wrote of their letter.

Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for Amazon, mentioned in a press release on Wednesday that the lawmaker’s considerations had been unfounded.

“There’s no factual foundation for this, as demonstrated within the big quantity of knowledge we’ve offered over a number of years of excellent religion cooperation with this investigation,” she mentioned.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Division mentioned the company had obtained the letter and was reviewing it.

The letter intensifies stress on federal regulators to rein within the energy of Amazon. The Home committee accused Amazon of abusing its place in on-line commerce to hurt opponents that depend on the net platform to promote items. The panel’s antitrust subcommittee additionally accused Amazon and different tech giants, together with Fb, Google and Apple, of abusing their monopoly energy and known as for sweeping adjustments to antitrust legal guidelines to curtail the dominance of the Silicon Valley giants.

The Federal Commerce Fee opened an antitrust investigation into Amazon about two years in the past, and the company can also be reviewing the corporate’s proposed $8.45 billion merger with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the Hollywood studio. Earlier than changing into F.T.C. chair, Lina Khan was identified for a paper she wrote for the Yale Legislation Journal known as “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” which argued that even when it provided extra comfort and decrease costs for customers, the corporate had abused its dominance.