COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE SUPPORTED FAS IN A CASE ON COLLUSION BETWEEN CARTEL MEMBERS AND MOSCOW HOSPITALS

Moscow Arbitration Court pronounced legitimacy and reasonableness of a decision made by FAS Commission with regard to an anticompetitive agreement by three Moscow hospitals (Vinogradov City Clinical Hospital, Moscow Health Care Department; No.67 Vorokhobov Vinogradov City Clinical Hospital, Moscow Health Care Department; No.68 Vorokhobov Vinogradov City Clinical Hospital, Moscow Health Care Department) with “PHARM_PROJECT” Ltd. and “Vesta-Pharm” Ltd. that restricted competition

FAS established that the customers had been sending the first parts of auction applications to staff of cartel members, who, in their turn, suggested the wording to reject applications of companies that are not cartel members. The customers included these statements word for word in the protocols of consideration of the first parts of applications, preventing auction access for bona fide companies. As a consequence, all analyzed auctions were completed with the minimum reduction of the initial contract prices against the veneer of competition by cartel members.

The total sum of the initial contract prices of the auctions investigated by FAS exceeded 644 million RUB.

Court of First Instance found written communications between the cartel members and the customers and other evidence sufficient to find that the defendants violated the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”.

As Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department Andrey Tenishev pointed out, “judicial appeals of decisions made by FAS Commission is a procedural right of defendants. Nevertheless, statistics proves that in 2017 Arbitration Courts fully reversed only 5.77% of FAS decisions.”