Dawn raid in Vienna

Staff at the European Commission's competition directorate (DGIV) in Brussels like to refer to the June 23 events as a "dawn raid" ­ in fact they were unannounced house searches of the seven biggest banks in Vienna. The men from Brussels struck at the civilized hour of 9.00am, calling at each institution's front door and asking to see the chief executive. The investigators even postponed searching three of the seven banks until the next day.

DGIV was acting on a tip-off well over a year old, so it didn't expect to catch Austrian bankers with their trousers down. The investigators were polite but firm, relying on chaps from the Austrian economics ministry to do the tough stuff, like opening cupboard doors. "We don't force locks and we don't strip-search people," says a source close to the Brussels team. They were looking for any files and computer documents that referred...