Top Amazon.com Inc executives including founder Jeff Bezos and chief executive officer Andy Jassy destroyed text messages discussing business, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged, erasing evidence the agency could have used in its antitrust case against the retail giant.

Between April 2019 and May 2022, Bezos, Jassy and others communicated using the encrypted communications platform Signal, the FTC said on Thursday in a court filing, and used a feature so that messages weren’t retained. Other executives who communicated via Signal, according to the FTC, include David Zapolsky, Amazon’s top lawyer; Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s retail czar until 2021; and Dave Clark, a longtime logistics executive who left in 2022 after Bezos handed the reins to Jassy. 

The FTC’s court filing expands on allegations the agency first made in its antitrust complaint last fall against the company. 

“The FTC’s contentions are baseless,” said company spokesman Tim Doyle. “Amazon voluntarily disclosed employees’ limited Signal use to the FTC years ago, thoroughly collected Signal conversations from its employees’ phones, and allowed agency staff to inspect those conversations even when they had nothing to do with the FTC’s investigation.”

Executives used the encrypted communications app after Bezos disclosed in 2019 that his phone had been hacked and alleged the National Enquirer tabloid sought to publish his intimate photos and texts.

The court filing seeks information about what Amazon executives conveyed to employees about when to communicate via Signal and its instructions on retaining messages. 

The investigation into Amazon opened by the agency in 2019 required the company to retain and turn over documents. By using Signal’s disappearing messages function, executives interfered with the FTC’s ability to investigate Amazon’s business conduct and potential antitrust violations, the agency said.

“The FTC has a complete picture of Amazon’s decision-making in this case including 1.7 million documents from sources like email, internal messaging applications, and laptops [among other sources], and over 100 terabytes of data,” Doyle said. 

US antitrust enforcers have also accused Alphabet Inc’s Google of destroying evidence by failing to retain internal communications despite multiple investigations into the company that required them to preserve documents. The Justice Department alleged that Google encouraged employees to have sensitive conversations over chat with the history function turned off, meaning the conversation would be automatically deleted after 24 hours. 

A California federal judge found Google “adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for chat preservation” and reprimanded the company’s top lawyer over the data preservation protocol.

The Justice Department has sought sanctions against the company over the issue, though a different federal judge has yet to rule on the request. 

The FTC could refer any wrongdoing it uncovers to the Justice Department if it discovers anyone deliberately destroyed evidence.
 

  - Bloomberg