 The early morning raid occured at Intel's offices in the Daehan Investements & Trust Building - Courtesy Heerim A&P
The Korean Fair Trade Commission conducts dawn raids on Intel offices in Korea
In another twist to AMD's ongoing antitrust case against Intel, the KFTC (Korean Fair Trade Commission) completed a dawn raid on Intel's Korean offices. This latest raid was conducted to investigate Intel's relationship with four South Korean PC vendors. AMD claims that Intel's predatory business dealings have victimized 38 companies around the world.
Intel was found guilty of monopolistic business practices by a Japanese
court ruling in March of 2005. In July of 2005, Intel offices and the
offices of major European PC vendors were raided by the European Commission to gather information in the ongoing antitrust case. The
company then lost another court battle on December 15th, 2005 after the
Tokoyo District
Court ruled that documents implicating Intel in improper business
practices had to be turned over to the Japanese Fair Trade Commission
and AMD.
AMD's executive vice president, Thomas M. McCoy, wasted no time expressing his thoughts on this latest inquiry into Intel's business practices: "Similar dawn raids
conducted by competition authorities in Japan revealed evidence of
illegal business practices that violated that country's Antimonopoly
Act. The JFTC ruled that Intel conditioned deals with Japanese PC OEMs
based on excluding competition. Last year, the European Commission
also conducted dawn raids across Europe to gather evidence of Intel
monopoly abuse within the European Union. How many raids in how many
countries need to happen before Intel accepts responsibility for its
anticompetitive actions and ceases its unlawful business practices?"
For those of you have haven't read AMD's full briefing on its case against Intel, be sure to download it here. It's quite a whopper weighing in at at a 48 pages.
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