The EU Ombudsman has decided that the EC Competition Directorate was guilty of maladministration in not making an official note of an interview which the directorate had with a Dell executive in the Intel anti-trust case.
The Ombudsman also found that the directorate was not guilty of maladministration in encouraging AMD and Dell to exchange information in the case.
These two issues were the subject of two complaints made by Intel to the Ombudsman after the EC fined Intel €1.06bn in May for alleged anti-trust infringements.
'Intel submitted the complaint on 10 July 2008', writes the Ombudsman., 'in its first allegation, it argued that the Commission failed to take minutes of a meeting with a senior Dell executive held on 23 August 2006, even though the meeting directly concerned the subject-matter of the Commission's anti-trust investigation of Intel.'
The Ombudsman found that the meeting of 23 August 2006 did concern the subject-matter of the Commission investigation.
He also found that the Commission did not make a 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.
He did not, however, make any finding as to whether the Commission had infringed Intel's rights of defence.
The Ombudsman did not make a finding of maladministration in relation to Intel's second allegation, which was that the Commission encouraged Dell to enter into an information exchange agreement with micro-chip producer AMD.
In the complainant's view, this agreement gave AMD access to information contained in the Commission's investigation file.
The Ombudsman did find, however, that the Commission failed to make a proper note of a telephone call between the Commission and Dell, in which the information exchange agreement was discussed.
Such a note would have helped to clarify the relevant facts. The Ombudsman recommended that, in the future, proper notes should be made of any meetings or telephone calls with third parties concerning important procedural issues.
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