New evidence?
The investigation by the European Commission into alleged anti-competitive activities by chip giant Intel, which resulted in Intel being fined over a billion euros, has been criticised by the European Ombudsman, which investigates complaints of maladministration by the European bureaucracy.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (which for some reason we could read in full for free), a report soon to be released by the Ombudsman, accuses the EC of omitting "potentially exculpatory" evidence from a witness, and this was guilty of "maladministration".
The witness in question was none other than an unidentified senior Dell executive, who is thought to have told the investigation in August 2006 that he viewed the performance of AMD, the alleged injured party in the Intel investigation, as "very poor". The inference of this is that Dell's decision to favour Intel over AMD was based on the relative quality of their products, rather than financial incentives.
The Ombudsman can't actually change the outcome of the case, but its observations can't do any harm to Intel's appeal of the decision. While one chat with an exec saying they chose Intel on its technical merits doesn't contradict findings of an allegedly more generalised business practice by itself, it does raise some questions about the objectivity of the investigation that such evidence was omitted.
