Jeff Bezos and Amazon Execs Used An Encrypted Messaging App to Talk About ‘Sensitive Business Matters,’ FTC Alleges
The Federal Trade Price (FTC) alleged in a Thursday court docket submitting that Amazon executives, including founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy, talked about “magnificent business matters” in now-erased textual disclose material messages that might maybe maybe perchance were faded as evidence in the FTC’s ongoing antitrust case towards Amazon.
In maintaining with the Thursday submitting, senior Amazon leaders faded the encrypted Impress messaging app from April 2019 to Can also simply 2022 and endured to delete messages by the app’s disappearing message feature — even when the FTC used to be investigating Amazon.
“Amazon executives deleted many Impress messages all the design in which by Plaintiffs’ pre-Criticism investigation, and Amazon did not mumble workers to withhold Impress messages till over fifteen months after Amazon knew that Plaintiffs’ investigation used to be underway,” the FTC wrote in the submitting.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Photograph by SAUL LOEB/AFP by potential of Getty Images
The FTC named Bezos, as successfully as other senior executives admire Amazon’s top attorney David Zapolsky, as one of the critical crucial leaders that faded Impress and its disappearing messages feature.
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The submitting is one portion of a bigger antitrust case that kicked off in September when the FTC sued Amazon, accusing the retail giant of illegally declaring a monopoly by anticompetitive practices.
Amazon replied that the lawsuit might maybe maybe negatively affect each the patrons who shop on its platform with elevated prices and the independent agencies that promote merchandise by it.
In Thursday’s submitting, the FTC asked for more knowledge about how Amazon’s leadership told workers to talk on Impress, including when to make use of it and if there were explicit instructions about deleting messages.
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Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle told Bloomberg that the FTC’s allegations had been “baseless” and that Amazon disclosed its Impress use to the FTC “years ago.”
Doyle furthermore told Enterprise Insider that “the FTC has a entire characterize of Amazon’s decision-making in this case including 1.7 million paperwork from sources admire email, inner messaging capabilities, and laptops (amongst other sources), and over 100 terabytes of recordsdata.”
