By Nandita Bose and Jeffrey Dastin
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday six people have been indicted by a grand jury in Washington state with conspiring to pay commercial bribes to employees and contractors of Amazon.com Inc.
Those indicted planned to pay over $100,000 in exchange for an unfair competitive advantage on the Amazon marketplace – a platform where third-party merchants sell goods, the Department said.
The defendants used bribery and fraud to reinstate products and accounts that Amazon had suspended or blocked entirely from doing business on its marketplace. That resulted in more than $100 million of competitive benefits to those accounts, harm to competitors and harm to consumers, according to the indictment.
“The ultimate victim from this criminal conduct is the buying public who get inferior or even dangerous goods that should have been removed from the marketplace,” U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran said in a statement.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company’s third-party marketplace has come under heavy scrutiny from lawmakers and regulatory agencies looking at Amazon’s business practices on the platform and whether it hurts small sellers.
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