OPERATOR UNLAWFULLY REJECTED AN APPLICANT’S REGISTRATION ON AN ELECTRONIC SITE

FAS ordered to re-do an 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 operator’s web-site.

As FAS established, the e-site rejected company’s registration claiming that there were stamps of issuing passports for travelling abroad on the end leaf of the passport of the company’s General Director. The operator considered the passport invalid.

As Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Construction and Natural Resources, Olesya Malaya, pointed out, “passports of citizens of the Russian Federation can contain stamps on issuing passports for travelling aboard, it is perfectly legal. In addition, the operator failed to present documents to FAS confirming that the passport in question was invalid.  The operator is not authorized to ascertain the facts of invalidity of such documents independently”.

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: “Technically, the operator executed FAS request and accepted the documents of “Grand Capital” Ltd. for consideration. However, it again rejected the company’s application referring already to other reasons. We will consider the new complaint from the applicant within the statutory period”.

“Bankruptcy auctions are organized at electronic sites, with which the auction organizer has contracts. Russia has more than 100 sites like this. At the same time, the law does not set common requirements to the sites. As a result, they draft their own regulations and refuse to register potential auction participants on the site due to a wide variety of reasons. To reduce the number of violations and protect the participants’ rights, FAS proposes to organize auctions, including bankruptcy auctions, with a common pool of e-sites that will work under the common rules”, saysDeputy Head of FAS Rachik Petrosyan.