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An ex-employee has alleged that Amazon breached UK sanctions by providing Moscow with its facial recognition technology after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The allegation forms part of evidence presented by Charles Forrest in a claim he brought against his former employer, Amazon Web Services, which the company is fighting. Forrest alleged that he was unfairly dismissed after blowing the whistle on a number of issues between November 2022 and May 2023.
Submissions in the case were heard as part of a preliminary hearing in the central London employment tribunal this week.
Amazon denies that it unfairly dismissed Forrest or that it sold its Rekognition facial recognition technology to the Russian company named in the filings. A spokesperson said: “We believe the claims lack merit and look forward to demonstrating that through the legal process.”
The company said Forrest, who worked for Amazon for four years until 2023, was dismissed for “gross misconduct” after he “refused to work his contractual hours” and failed to attend or respond to a number of meetings and emails, according to the tribunal filings.
Forrest said he raised concerns about alleged wrongdoing by Amazon in relation to a number of issues. They included the alleged “illegal supply of facial recognition technology to the Russian state security services” by Amazon after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the UK’s subsequent imposition of sanctions against Moscow.
According to the tribunal filings, Forrest alleged that Amazon in 2020 closed a deal with the Russian company VisionLabs to give it access to its facial recognition technology “through what appears to be a shell company based in the Netherlands”, adding that the technology was used post-invasion.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Based on available evidence and billing records, AWS did not sell Amazon Rekognition services to VisionLabs.”
Forrest claimed that he also reported the alleged illegal activity to the UK’s House of Commons defence select committee and Serious Fraud Office in May 2023.
Other issues raised by Forrest include the allegation that Amazon broke its self-imposed moratorium on police forces using its facial recognition technology, a ban the company put in place after the murder of George Floyd.
Even after the ban, Forrest said in the documents, UK police used the technology to process “mugshots” and “identify a perpetrator of an offence”.
In documents presented to the tribunal, Amazon said it denied that Forrest had “made any protected disclosures” and that in “many cases” it had been “difficult to identify what information was allegedly disclosed, the legal obligations or relevant failure relied upon, or when and to whom the alleged disclosures were made”.
According to the documents, the company said it denied that Forrest “held a reasonable belief” that the company had committed “any relevant failure related to international sanctions” and that it did not know what he had reported to the SFO.
The company acknowledged in its evidence that Forrest had alleged, in January 2023, that Amazon had breached its ban on the police use of its facial recognition technology.
However, Amazon said “that allegation is denied”, according to the documents. “A self-imposed moratorium does not amount to a legal obligation,” the company said.
The case continues.
