The United States House Judiciary Committee has sent a letter to Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos calling on him to appear before the Committee to testify about the company’s business practices.

The letter cites a recent report by the Wall Street Journal that had claimed that Amazon employees had access to third-party seller data in order to create similar private-label products.

According to the report, over 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business and documents reviewed by WSJ had revealed that the tech giant had provided access to independent sellers’ sales data to its employees for developing competing private-label products.

“On April 23, theWall Street Journal reported that Amazon used sensitive business information from third-party sellers on its platform to develop competing products, contradicting representations that Amazon made to the House Judiciary Committee in sworn written and oral testimony at a hearing on July 16, 2019. Amazon's associate general counsel, Nate Sutton, denied the company did this during his sworn testimony before the Antitrust Subcommittee last July,” the committee said.

The tech giant had previously asserted in a testimony to the Congress that it does not use information collected from the site’s third-party seller activities to sell its own products.

“If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the Committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious,” the committee further said in its letter.

Currently, Amazon is already facing an ongoing investigation regarding its role in the digital market place. The committee, last year, had directed the tech giant to present documents and communications related to Amazon’s relationship with sellers, including Amazon’s use of third-party sellers’ data.

However, it said that the company has “not made an adequate production in response” so far.

Bezos has currently been called to testify on a voluntary basis. However, the committee had said that it will resort to a “compulsory process if necessary.”

“It is vital to the Committee, as part of its critical work investigating and understanding competition issues in the digital market, that Amazon respond to these and other critical questions concerning competition issues in digital markets. Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, we reserve the right to resort to a compulsory process if necessary,” the committee said in its letter to Bezos.

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