Tax police in Italy have entered the offices of Fitch Ratings in Milan in an investigation related to the downgrade of Italian sovereign debt. Italian authorities had already visited the offices of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, so the visit to Fitch was probably not unexpected.
Italian authorities were pretty steamed at the debt downgrade and are investigating the ratings agencies for “possible crimes of market manipulation and illicit use of privileged information,” according to a report from Reuters.