Reuters has rejected allegations made by Intentia International AB that it used 'illegal means' to obtain and publish the IT firm's Q3 results ahead of their official release.
Intentia says it has filed criminal charges with the National Criminal Investigation Department's computer crime division in Sweden against Reuters. This follows an internal investigation showing there was an unauthorised entry into the company's IT systems via an IP-address belonging to Reuters.
In a statement on the company's website, Intentia says that entry took place at 12:51 pm on October 24 2002 and at approximately 12:57 pm, Reuters published the first news flash giving information on Intentia's third quarter results without prior confirmation from the company.
Reuters maintains that its Stockholm news bureau accessed Intentia's public Web site and not from a private or password-protected site, and found the results information ahead of the scheduled release time.
Geert Linnebank, Reuters' editor in chief, says: "Reuters is in the business of informing the market with breaking news stories using all the tools at its disposal, but doing so in a legitimate, ethical manner with journalistic integrity."