OREANDA-NEWS. November 07, 2011. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that “Resours” Federal State Unitary Enterprise and “Inform Yust” CJSC violated the antimonopoly law by restricting competition in course of competitive bidding (Article 17 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”), reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

FAS received numerous complaints from physical and legal persons indicating numerous obstacles set by the auction organizer (“Inform Yust” CJSC) and sellers of state property (“Resours” Federal State Unitary Enterprise). The complaints emphasized complicated procedures for signing a dawn payment contract (responsible persons of “Resours” Federal State Unitary Enterprise, who had the signature authority, were in Moscow, while the bids for signing the dawn payment contract had to be filed in Vladimir), a limited time interval for filing the bids (from 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.), preliminary registration for filing the bids.

As a result, the bidders were unreasonably restricted in their possibilities to file the bids, and the persons that duly signed the down payment contract and paid it could not take part in the auction, which is confirmed by numerous notary evidence.

“The auction organizer had to ensure accepting the bids in the fixed time because the organizer made appointments for particular time. There are reasons to believe that if more bidders were allowed to take part in the auction – the auction price could have been considerably higher. According to the bidders, they were prepared to pay up to 700 million Rubles, while the person recognized as the auction winner offered 206 million Rubles and the initial price was 196 million Rubles”, commented Stats-Secretary Andrey Tsarikovskiy, Deputy Head of FAS Russia.

Earlier upon its own initiative, FAS jointly with the Ministry of Economic Development introduced changes to the law in order to simplify privatization procedures and cut down the number of abuses. It is no more required to conclude a down payment contract in the form of a separate document or submitting documents that confirm the antimonopoly authority was notified about an intention to buy property. However, the law on privatization does not regulate sales of state property under operating control of a federal state unitary enterprise.

To exclude such situations in the future, FAS signs an Order on introducing changes to No. 67 FAS Order, which upon registration with the Ministry of Justice of RF will extend the auction procedures, used to lease state and municipal property, to selling property of federal state unitary enterprises. In particular, the procedure for signing preliminary down payment agreement will be fully abolished, the same way as in the law on privatization.