Companies in Brazil are being probed

SAO PAULO
Brazil is investigating seven large European and Japanese companies to determine whether they violated antitrust laws in a bid to fix prices for equipment used to generate electricity in the country.

The Justice Ministry identified the European companies as Swiss-Swedish ABB Ltd., France’s Areva Ltd., Germany’s Siemens AG and Austria’s VA Technolgie AG. The Japanese companies under investigation are Japan AE Power Systems Corp., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Toshiba Corp., the ministry said in a statement released late Monday. Authorities raided the Sao Paulo offices of Siemens and Areva last week, looking for documents and electronic archives to support the claims, the ministry said.

Siemens acknowledged that investigators visited one of its Brazilian installations, and said the company would issue a more detailed statement later. Areva said company officials handed over documents to authorities, adding that its electricity transmission and distribution unit under scrutiny had been acquired from French engineering company Alstom SA in January 2004.
...