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EU: Antitrust director-general defends EC raids of oil firms

By  |  June 26, 2013

An aide for European Commissioner Joaquin Almunia defended the regulator’s decision to raid various firms as part of its investigation into allegations of oil price manipulation, stating that the watchdog would not have conducted such searches without “potentially decent information” concerning the matter. The EU’s Deputy directory-general for antitrust Cecilio Madero told reporters that information on the case was thoroughly analyzed by officials before the raids on Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Statoil were carried out last month; now, the regulator is in the process of reviewing “thousands” of pages of information collected in those searches. The Commission is looking into allegations that companies fixed oil pricing benchmarks throughout Europe.

Full Content: Bloomberg

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