Trailing the European Union's record 1.45 Billion Dollar penalty against silicon giant Intel for antitrust malpractice in Europe, American antitrust regulators are on the verge of filing their own set of charges against the company, emanating out of similar findings of investigations carried out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Sources tell BusinessDay that three out of four commissioners on the FTC were in favor of filing a complaint against Intel. FTC's own inquiry opened in June, last year. It could be a matter of weeks, or even months before a vote formalizing FTC's stand on the issue happens.

"Our business practices are lawful and [work] to the benefit of consumers," said Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy, in response to the BusinessDay report. "We certainly have been working closely with the FTC as they conduct their investigation. We would hope that the speculation is incorrect ," he added. The US antitrust investigation follows similar investigations that have concluded against the favor of Intel, by the European Union, South Korea, and Japan. Japan's trade commission concluded in 2005 that Intel violated the country's anti-monopoly act. In June last year, South Korea fined Intel about $26m, finding it offered rebates to PC makers in return for not buying AMD microprocessors. EU's investigations yielded similar findings, where the company was fined 1.06 Billion EUR for paying computer makers to postpone or cancel products that use microprocessors made by smaller competitor AMD.