EU competition officials have raided the headquarters of fruit importer Fyffes in an investigation into a suspected cartel in the banana and pineapple businesses.
Yesterday up to seven inspectors from the EU competition body and the Competition Authority in Dublin are said to have spent most of the day at Fyffes headquarters in central Dublin after they entered the office at around 10am.
The visit was co-ordinated with a series of other raids on several major fruit companies in Germany, Belgium and Britain.
The inspectors examined paper and computer-based records held by Fyffes, which has been involved for months in an insider dealing case in the High Court against industrial holding group DCC.
The European Commission's competition directorate general was not previously known to be investigating the fruit industry.
But its spokesman Jonathan Todd said last night that the antitrust body had reason to believe that companies under investigation "may have violated" article 81 of the EC Treaty, which prohibits price-fixing and market-sharing practices.
Fyffes' company secretary Philip Halpenny said the company was co-operating with the investigation, but declined to comment further.
"EU Commission officials today made unannounced visits to Fyffes premises in connection with inquiries they are making into the banana and pineapple trade in the EU," he said.
"The visits related to a wider inquiry that includes all of Fyffes' principal competitors in the European market and we are co-operating with those inquiries."
It was unclear late last night whether the competition officials plan any further visit to Fyffes' offices or whether they have demanded that the company produce any further records.
Mr Todd said that surprise inspections were "a preliminary step" in investigations into suspected cartels.
He declined to answer when asked whether the Commission was acting on information received from within the industry or any other source.
"The European Commission can confirm that on June 2nd, 2005, commission officials carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of several producers and distributors of bananas and pineapples in Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom and Ireland," he said.
"The fact that the European Commission carries out such inspections does not mean that the companies are guilty of anti-competitive behaviour nor does it prejudge the outcome of the investigation itself."
Mr Todd said that the commission respected the rights of defence, in particular the right of companies to be heard in anti-trust proceedings.
"There is no strict deadline to complete cartel inquiries. Their duration depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of each case, the extent to which the undertakings concerned co-operate and the exercise of the rights of defence."
Mr Todd also said that the commission officials were accompanied by their counterparts from the relevant national competition authorities.
The raid on Fyffes' office comes as it pursues its action alleging insider dealing in connection with the €106 million sale of DCC's stake in the company over three days in February 2000.
The action is against DCC plc, its chief executive, Mr Jim Flavin, and two DCC subsidiaries - S&L Investments Ltd and Lotus Green Ltd - all of which deny the claims and plead that the share sales were properly organised by Lotus. Members of the McCann family, who own some 11.2 per cent of Fyffes, have featured prominently in the case.
The court has heard that Lotus Green is a Dutch-resident subsidiary of DCC to which beneficial ownership of the Fyffes shareholding was transferred in 1995 in a move to avoid payment of capital gains tax on any sale of the shares.
There have been 74 days of public hearings, although the case is expected to run for some weeks yet.
