Jeff Bezos and Amazon board sued in row more than satellites to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink

Amazon has been accused of disregarding a “glaring conflict of interest” when awarding hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars in rocket contracts to a business owned by Jeff Bezos.

A lawsuit submitted by an Amazon shareholder accuses the e-commerce giant’s board of acting “in undesirable faith” soon after handing a contract to Mr Bezos’s rocket organization, Blue Origin, just after significantly less than 40 minutes of discussion.

Amazon is setting up to start a extensive network of much more than 3,000 satellites that will deliver online accessibility all over the globe.

As component of the prepare, it will have to deal rocket firms to hearth its satellites into space.

Amazon has presently paid about $1.7bn to a few companies, including $585m to Mr Bezos’s Blue Origin. Its other contracts are with France’s Arianespace and United Launch Alliance.

The Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, which is bringing the lawsuit, mentioned the rocket launch contract was the “second largest” in Amazon’s historical past, just after its $13.7bn takeover of Complete Foodstuff.

The lawful declare alleges the company’s audit committee “inexplicably” did not take into account awarding the contract to rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in spite of the rival company’s observe document for prosperous rocket launches.

SpaceX was not amongst the options introduced to board members, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit argues the board experienced minimal job in negotiations. Instead, Mr Bezos and his crew led the negotiations with a company he also owned, it is claimed.

The company’s audit committee “rubberstamped” the transaction in January 2022 when Mr Bezos was even now main government of Amazon, the go well with alleges. Two months later, the deal was permitted by the board.

The whole Amazon board, including Mr Bezos, are defendants in the situation.

The lawsuit adds that, further than the opportunity conflict of desire, there was not more than enough scrutiny of “Blue Origin’s absence of reliability”. The claim states the company’s large carry rocket remains “firmly rooted to the ground”. Amazon has nevertheless to start a solitary satellite. 

While Mr Bezos’s rocket firm has introduced fifty percent a dozen vacationer flights to the edge of space, its recent New Shepard rocket has not flown for more than a yr. The initial start of its much larger New Glenn rocket is not prepared until finally up coming yr.

An Amazon spokesman said: “The claims in this lawsuit are entirely devoid of benefit, and we glance forward to displaying that via the lawful system.”