US Federal regulators are ordering Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy to testify in the government’s investigation of Amazon Prime, rejecting the company’s complaint that the executives are being unfairly harassed in the probe of the popular streaming and shopping service.
The Federal Trade Commission issued an order late Wednesday
denying Amazon’s request to cancel civil subpoenas sent in June to Bezos, the
Seattle-based company’s former CEO, and Jassy.
The order also sets a deadline of January 20 for the
completion of all testimony by Bezos, Jassy and 15 other senior executives, who
also were subpoenaed. Jassy took over the helm of the online retail and tech
giant from Bezos, one of the world’s richest individuals, in July 2021. Bezos
became executive chairman.
Amazon hasn’t made the case that the subpoenas “present
undue burdens in terms of scope or timing”, FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson
said in the order on behalf of the agency. However, the FTC did agreed to
modify some provisions of the subpoenas that it acknowledged appeared too
broad.
The FTC has been investigating since March 2021 the sign-up
and cancellation practices of Amazon Prime, which has an estimated 200 million
members around the globe. The company said it was disappointed but not
surprised that the FTC mostly ruled in favour of its own position, but it was
pleased that the agency “walked backed its broadest requests” in the subpoenas.
“Amazon has cooperated with the FTC throughout the
investigation and already produced tens of thousands of pages of documents,”
the company said in a statement. “We are committed to engaging constructively
with FTC staff, but we remain concerned that the latest requests are overly
broad and needlessly burdensome, and we will explore all our options.”
.jpeg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment