EU publishes alleged evidence against Intel

BRUSSELS: The European Commission on Monday published e-mails and other company records to back a record-busting anti-trust action against Intel, which the US computer chip giant is contesting.

The EU competition regulators fined Intel a record 1.06 billion euros (1.45 billion dollars) in May, claiming the chip maker abused its stranglehold on the semiconductor market to crush its main rival AMD.

In one such instance US personal computer giant Dell, in 2003, noted that Intel's retaliation "could be severe and prolonged with impact to all lines of business" if Dell were to start buying chips from Intel competitor AMD, according to the EU's findings.

An email from an executive of Chinese high-tech giant Lenovo was also cited in the published EU decision which spoke of Intel's "naked restrictions" on business partners.

"Late last week Lenovo cut a lucrative deal with Intel. As a result of this, we will not be introducing AMD based products in 2007 for our Notebook products," the December 2006 email said.

There was similar evidence concerning an Intel deal with Hewlett Packard.

Intel has defended such rebates, arguing that computer makers approach the company seeking price reductions.