OREANDA-NEWS. April 21, 2014. Arbitration Court took the side of the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the Voronezh region (Voronezh OFAS Russia) in a dispute with “Sozvezdie” Concern” OJSC. The company filed several lawsuits attempting to abolish OFAS decisions to cancel auctions for supplying equipment to the company for over 100 million RUB.

Earlier Voronezh OFAS Russia found that “Sozvezdie” Concern” OJSC restricted competition at the auctions for supplying two sets of measurement equipment with the total initial contract price – 74,700,000 RUB and 21,900,000 RUB as well as a sheet bending press with the initial price around 7.7 million RUB.

The auction documentation set a requirement to the procurement participants that the proceeds from selling goods, products, works, services in 2012 (w/o VAT) must be more than 1 billion RUB.

Based on this requirement, any large company that receive such proceeds but does not specialize in supplying such equipment could take part in the auctions while small companies were deprived of such an opportunity.

The Commission of the antimonopoly body found that “Sozvezdie” Concern” OJSC violated Part 1 Article 17 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”, which prohibits actions in the course of auctions that lead or can lead to preventing, restricting or eliminating competition, and issued a determination to abolish the auction results.

“The Court judgment once again proves that the position of the antimonopoly body is correct and enables suppressing systematic violations of the law by large customers that are eager to distribute orders between their structures at the highest price rather than spend the allocated funds efficiently”, pointed out the Acting Head of Voronezh OFAS Russia, Denis Chushkin.