OPERATOR REPEATEDLY REFUSED TO REGISTER AN APPLICANT ON AN ELECTRONIC SITE

FAS ordered to reconsider a bidder’s application in line with the law and re-do the auction

In summer 2019, www.tendergarant.com e-site conducted an auction to sell property of a debtor (”Inga”) with the initial (maximum) contract price over 250 million RUB.

“Grand Capital” Ltd. complained about the site operator: the company could not take part in the auction due to an unlawful refusal from the operator to register it on the auction web-site.

As FAS established, the e-site rejected company’s registration claiming that the latter had presented incorrect information about its registered address.

According to Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Construction and Natural Resources, Olesya Malaya, “the application for registration included, in particular, copies of all sheets of an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. There are no indications in the extract from the Register that information about the applicant’s place of registration is incorrect”.

FAS issued “TENDER GARANT” Ltd. a mandatory order to reconsider the company’s documents if “Grand Capital” Ltd. files them.

Oleg Korneev, Head of FAS Department for Control over Construction and Natural Resources,informed: “The site operator repeatedly refused to register “Grand Capital” Ltd. On both occasions FAS concluded that such actions were unlawful”.

“Such actions of the site operator once again emphasize the importance of introducing common auction rules that would cancel out a possibility of sites to manipulate various arguments in order to reject potential bidders. It will decrease competition-restricting violations and protect the bidders’ rights”, pointed out Deputy Head of FAS Rachik Petrosyan.