OREANDA-NEWS. February 01, 2010. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that the Federal Fishery Agency (Rosrybolovstvo) violated Part 1 Article 15 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The case was initiated upon a petition of Russian fishery managers on cancelling an auction to sell the rights for parts of the quotas for Pacific salmon in the economic zone of the Russian Federation in July 2009.

Rosrybolovstvo - a government body responsible for providing public services in the area of commercial fishing - violated the antimonopoly law due to a failure to taking necessary actions for allocating catch (yield) quotas for anadromous species (Pacific salmon) among Russian fishing industries.

Investigating the case, the FAS Russia's Commission discovered that the auction to sell the rights for parts of the quotas for Pacific salmon in the economic zone of the Russian Federation, announced by Rosrybolovstvo in July 2009, was cancelled and until now Rosrybolovstvo has not announced a new auction. Therefore, fishing companies were not given the right to catch Pacific salmon in the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation in 2009.

"Cancelling the auction, Rosrybolovstvo did not allocate the rights for catching Pacific salmon, which forced many Russian fishing companies to stop their operations in 2009", said Stats-Secretary Andrey Tsarikovsky, Deputy Head of FAS Russia.

Having investigated the case, the FAS Russia's Commission issued a determination to Rosrybolovstvo to exercise actions for granting, in accordance with the established procedures, the rights to Russian fishing industries to enter into contracts for catching Pacific salmon.