EC guilty of maladministration in Intel antitrust investigation
According to the European ombudsman, maladministration -- the act of administering or managing badly or inefficiently -- took place in the investigation when the Commission failed to make a proper note of a meeting with Dell.
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- EDN, November 18, 2009
An Intel Corp EC (European Commission) complaint has been validated.
European Ombudsman P Nikiforos Diamandouros has published a non-confidential version of his decision on a complaint by Intel against the EC, concerning alleged procedural errors by the Commission during its antitrust investigation of the MPU maker.
The long-running antitrust investigation lead to a May 13, EC finding that Intel broke antitrust rules by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 CPUs. That decision came with a record $1.45 billion EC antitrust fine. The ombudsman's decision is unlikely to impact that finding or fine.
According to the ombudsman, maladministration -- the act of administering or managing badly or inefficiently -- took place in the investigation when the Commission failed to make a proper note of a meeting with Dell.
The ombudsman’s decision followed a compliant Intel submitted on July 10, 2008, arguing that the Commission failed to take minutes of a meeting with a senior Dell executive held on August 23, 2006, even though the meeting directly concerned the subject-matter of the Intel antitrust investigation.
The ombudsman found that the Dell meeting concerned the subject-matter of the investigation. He also found that the Commission did not make proper note of that meeting and that its investigation file did not include the agenda of the meeting. The ombudsman concluded that this constituted maladministration.
However, the ombudsman did not make a finding of maladministration in relation to Intel's second allegation, which was that the EC encouraged Dell to enter into an information exchange agreement with Intel rival AMD.
Diamandouros' decision, which was classified as confidential, was sent to the EC and Intel on July 14. The EC said that preparation of the non-confidential version of the decision required consultation with Intel, Dell, and AMD to ensure that publication would not harm the interests of the complainant or of a third party.
