In its quarterly report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it had received an enquiry in June from the Korea Fair Trade Commission requesting documents from Intel’s Korean subsidiary relating to programs Intel entered into with Korean PC makers.
Intel is cooperating with these agencies in their investigations and expects that these matters will be acceptably resolved, read the regulatory filing.
Intel spokesperson Chuck Molloy said Korean authorities had requested documents that relates to Intel’s business practices, how we sell and a broad range of things. No formal investigation had been launched, he said.
Molloy said it was prudent for the company to make public the Korean enquiry given all the other disclosures in the quarterly report.
Also mentioned in yesterday’s filing were antitrust complaints from chief rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc, also initiated in June, alleging that Intel and its Japanese subsidiary acted illegally with secret and discriminatory discounts and rebates. Intel has denied the accusations.
Intel also is part of an ongoing investigation by the European Commission that Intel used unfair business practiced to persuade customers to buy its microprocessors, which the company also mentioned in its latest SEC filing.
The Korean probe is a non-public enquiry, which is why Intel did not previously disclose it to the public, Molloy said. He also noted that Intel receives enquiries of this nature related to a wide variety of things on a regular basis.
