FAS warned “Rossvyaz” to eliminate violations of the antimonopoly law
FAS inspections revealed signs of violating the antimonopoly law by “Russian Satellite Communications Company”, particularly actions of the Federal Communications Agency (“Rossvyaz”).
International communications activities are the functions of the administrative communications body of the Russian Federation (the Ministry of Communications), formalized in the Regulations on the federal executive body. At the same time, the Statute of “Russian Satellite Communications Company” formalizes that the company also can perform this functions, which, in the opinion of the antimonopoly body, is unacceptable and can affect allocation of frequency resources of communications for domestic consumers.
The Federal Communications Agency is an executive body, to which the company is subordinate. It also approves the latest versions of the Statute of “Russian Satellite Communications Company”.
Thus, FAS found that “Rossvyaz” violated the antimonopoly law in the part of assigning the function of the government body to an economic entity. Part 3 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” established an unconditional ban on such actions (1).
“Warnings are a good preventative measure to eliminate violations and report to the antimonopoly body before opening a case”, said Deputy Head of FAS Department for Aviation, Rocket-and-Space and Nuclear Industry, Anton Petukhov.
- Part 3 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” (No.135-FZ) prohibits combining functions of federal executive bodies, executive bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation, other authorities, local self-government bodies and functions of economic entities, except cases established by the federal laws, Decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, Decrees of the Government of the Russian Federation, as well as assigning functions and rights of the above bodies to economic entities, particular functions and rights of the bodies of government control and supervision <…>