A case against suppliers of computer equipment

FAS suspects that “Craftway Corporation PLC” JSC, “Adaptive Technologies” Ltd. and “Express + Service” Ltd. concluded an anticompetitive agreement participating in e-auctions for supplying computers and software tools for the needs of some government authorities

The auctions were organized in particular, by the “Tax-Service” Federal State Enterprise of the Federal Tax Service, the Federal Customs Service, and the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. The total sum of the initial prices of the government contracts at the auction exceeded 2 billion RUB.

FAS opened a case upon signs of violating Clause 2 Part 1 Article 11 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”.

Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Andrey Tenishev, pointed out: “In the exposed auctions the reduction of the initial price of the government contracttypically was at the minimum. Moreover, cases are established when after bidding the winner purchased computer equipment from the “loser” participant at lower pries and resold it to the ordering party. In this case it is also appropriate to  talk about material damage for the ordering parties. We plan to look into those issues jointly with the law enforcement bodies”.

Anticompetitive agreements for the purpose of maintain prices are punished by fines in the amount of 10 до 50% of the initial values of the bidding subject. If an antimonopoly body ascertains a fact of concluding and exercising a competition agreement, each cartel participant is fined regardless whether they are the winners.

When the antimonopoly authority sees signs of violations under Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the case materials have to be transferred to the law enforcement bodies.

Deputy Head of FAS, Stats-Secretary Andrey Tsarikovskiy explained: “It is already the second caseon bid-rigging collusion between the authorities related to computer hardware and software. We believe that it is not the last since we observe clear evidence of a critical level of cartelization in this field”.