Translated material
Antimonopoly in the water area
FAS accuses the capital authorities of being too zealous in the fight against landing stages
The Federal Antimonopoly Service intervened in the conflict between the owners of landing stages and the Moscow authorities , which has been going on openly since the summer - it stood up for floating offices and restaurants that complained of harassment by capital officials. The service decided to initiate a case against the Moscow government, MGUP Mosvodokanal, State Unitary Enterprise Gormost, the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate and OJSC Moscow City Electric Grid Company for violating the Law on Protection of Competition. Now a special commission will have to judge the legality of the methods of the city authorities’ struggle for the cleanliness of the Moscow River.The conflict between the Moscow authorities and the landing stages began last summer. Then Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said that numerous floating offices, restaurants and hotels disfigure the appearance of the city and the Moscow River, and “in environmental terms they are generally terrorists,” so there is no place for them in the center of the capital. The mayor and his subordinates promised that by the time navigation was closed, not a single landing stage would remain on the river, however, despite several demonstrative actions (in one of which Mayor Luzhkov personally participated), when tugboats literally tore away restaurants and offices moored to the embankments, they and remained in their places.
Apparently, the capital’s officials simply preferred an exhausting bureaucratic struggle to decisive forceful action: they tried to disconnect the landing stages from heat, light and sewerage, the passages to them, carved into the stone parapets of the embankments, were walled up, and they even installed signs prohibiting parking next to floating offices and restaurants to discourage potential clients from visiting them.
“After such actions by the Moscow authorities, violating the laws, we began to sue them,” Vladimir Nikonov, a representative of the companies LLC Center Granat and LLC Alba Intel, which own several landing stages on Frunzenskaya Embankment, told Vremya Novostey. In particular, Mr. Nikonov explained, Mosvodokanal had to go to court due to the shutdown of water supply and sewerage on the landing stages, claims were brought against the State Unitary Enterprise Gormost for sealing passages in the parapets, and Mosenergosbyt was accused of illegally shutting off floating offices and restaurants from electricity. “Almost everywhere the court took our side. We sent all these decisions to the FAS,” said Valery Nikonov and noted that as soon as “we were not afraid to go to the courts,” the attention of the capital’s officials weakened somewhat.
The FAS also fully supported the shipowners' complaints. As stated in the message posted on the official website of the service, “signs of violation of antimonopoly legislation are seen in unreasonable obstruction of the activities of business entities.” The FAS believes that the Moscow government, Mosvodokanal, Gormost, the traffic police department of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate, and the Moscow City Electric Grid Company carried out “concerted actions that lead to the elimination of business entities from the commodity market,” despite the fact that the owners of the landing stages had all the permits. In particular, the service sees a violation by the Moscow government and “structures subordinate to it” of antimonopoly legislation in cases where the mayor’s office gave instructions to revoke previously issued permits for the placement of landing stages, for connecting them to utilities, as well as clearing embankments from berths for floating restaurants and offices. In addition, the FAS accuses the Moscow State Traffic Safety Inspectorate of installing road signs prohibiting parking on behalf of the capital's government.
Such an unexpected decision by the service apparently put the capital authorities accused of violating antimonopoly legislation at a dead end: yesterday officials refused to comment, and at the mayor’s office, according to our newspaper, there was even a meeting held to discuss how to deal with the landing stages.
However, Mosenergosbyt still admitted that they acted on the orders of the mayor’s office. “Yes, we really turned off seven landing stages, including one by court order. In other cases, we followed the instructions received from the mayor's office. But we haven’t turned off more than one landing stage without reason,” Mosenergosbyt press secretary Sergei Kozlovsky told Vremya Novostey.
It is noteworthy that the FAS does not make any claims against Rosprirodnadzor, about which landing stage owners have also repeatedly complained. “We only had complaints against those landing stages who did not have documents. And the Moscow authorities are against all landing stages in general,” Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor, told Vremya Novostey yesterday.