Antitrust regulators in
Europe expanded their investigation of Intel Corp. Thursday by charging
the world's largest microprocessor-maker with illegally pushing rival
Advanced Micro Devices out of retail stores in the 27-nation European
Union.
Santa Clara's Intel denied wrongdoing and called the action by the
European equivalent of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission "the same set
of complaints that our competitor, AMD, has been making to regulators
and courts around the world for more than 10 years."
In February, European officials raided the offices of two European
retailers, Media Markt and DSG International. Without naming names,
European regulators allege that "Intel has provided substantial rebates
to a leading European personal computer retailer conditional on it
selling only Intel-based PCs."
Intel has eight weeks to respond to the latest charges and the case
is far from decided. Should the charges be upheld by the 27-member
European Commission, Intel could face a fine of up to 10 percent of
global sales or roughly $3.8 billion.
From : http://www.sfgate.com/
