SAKHALIN OFAS SUSPECTS CARTEL OF COAL COMPANIES FOR OVER 4 BILLION RUB

The antimonopoly body revealed signs of collusion between companies participated in five auctions for coal supplies

Sakhalin OFAS opened a case against “Gornyak-1” Ltd. and “Sakhalincoal-3” Ltd. upon elements of an anticompetitive agreement that results in maintaining prices at auctions for supplying coal products for over 4 billion RUB. Commercial operations of both companies are related to coal sales, particularly, delivering it to consumers.

During an unscheduled inspection, Sakhalin OFAS and the Federal Antimonopoly Service found evidence of collusion between “Gornyak-1” Ltd. and “Sakhalincoal-3” Ltd. For example, in the course of the visit, it was established that competitors were located at the same address and were jointly preparing to take part in competitive procedures for coal supply.  Also both companies filed bids to take part in the auctions form the same IP-address and gave the same phone number and postal address for communication.

“Maintaining auction prices, first of all, has an adverse impact upon end consumers, our population. Therefore, we undertake ongoing efforts to prevent as well as expose anticompetitive agreements”, says Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Andrey Tenishev. “Unfortunately, today’s case is not the only incident of violating the antimonopoly law that we managed to expose together with the colleagues from OFAS on the Far East fuel market”.

Earlier, a violation of Article 11 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” was found in Chukotka and Kamchatka. Also, joint inspections by the Federal Antimonopoly Service and Khabarovsk OFAS exposed signs of an anticompetitive agreement at auctions for the right to conclude contracts for railway coal transportation between “Far East Generating Company” JSC, “RusHydroSnabzhenie” JSC, “VOSTEK” JSC and “TransCol” Ltd.