Cartel participants fined 24 million

The Arbitration Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the Udmurtia OFAS (Regional Federal Antimonopoly Service) to fine four companies for a cartel conspiracy during 280 auctions for the supply of goods to regional medical institutions. The FAS accused LLC Aibolit, LLC Angro, LLC Praktika, and LLC Soyuz of collusion.

In 2015, the FAS established that bids for participation in auctions for the supply of goods to regional medical institutions were actually submitted from a single computer. According to the FAS, the companies intentionally maintained high contract prices during the auctions.

In the absence of other auction participants or in the presence of a passive participant who did not submit price proposals, LLC Aibolit, LLC Praktika, and LLC Soyuz created the appearance of bidding and competition; the price reduction in such auctions ranged from 0.5% to 2%. However, if an independent third participant was present who actively participated in the auction by submitting price proposals, LLC Aibolit and one of the other violators (LLC Praktika or LLC Soyuz) would begin a competitive struggle with this independent participant. In this case, the contract price reduction reached from 18% to 62%. The companies filed an appeal in court. However, the Seventeenth Arbitration Court of Appeal supported the antimonopoly service.

The violators were ordered to pay administrative fines calculated from the initial maximum contract price (IMCP) of the auctions in which they participated. In particular, the fine for LLC Praktika amounted to 9.4 million rubles, LLC Aibolit – 9.9 million rubles, LLC Angro – 3.5 million rubles, and LLC Soyuz – 1.2 million rubles.

"The implementation of the cartel agreement led to income on a large scale – more than 58 million rubles. We will seek a decision to initiate a criminal case under Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation," commented Andrey Tenishev, Head of the Cartel Fighting Department of the Russian FAS.

Previously, the FAS proposed differentiating the amounts of fines for businesses for different types of violations of antimonopoly legislation – cartel conspiracies, concerted practices, vertical and other agreements.