First fine for kerosene

Oil workers can't keep up with FAS

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) continues to try to prove to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the effectiveness of its work. As you know, in mid-July, at a meeting on the development of the oil and gas industry, the head of the Cabinet of Ministers threatened the FAS with “personnel decisions”, in the form of an ultimatum, demanding to deal with “the world’s highest prices for jet fuel.” Within a few days , the service accused LUKOIL, Gazprom Neft, Rosneft, TNK-BP and Surgutneftegaz of violating the Law on Protection of Competition . Yesterday, the FAS demonstrated that it is not going to let the situation with rising prices for aviation fuel slide: the service said that oil companies had not provided “all the necessary information for the investigation,” so now they face fines.

Oil workers traditionally reacted quite calmly to the FAS statements. Even after the start of the investigation, representatives of all five companies said that they were ready “for all kinds of cooperation” with government authorities. However, Vremya Novostey’s sources in the companies then unofficially stated that the frenetic activity of the FAS was dictated by the need to demonstrate to Vladimir Putin “at least some actions,” but in fact, “no one entered into any conspiracies.”

However, oil companies were apparently not ready for “all kinds of cooperation.” FAS stated yesterday “that on August 1, the deadline for the oil companies LUKOIL, Gazprom Neft, TNK-BP, Rosneft, and Surgutneftegaz to provide information requested by the service in the framework of cases initiated on grounds of violation of Part 1 of Art. 10 Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”. As the service clarifies, only one company submitted all documents on time - Surgutneftegaz. Service employees came to check on the rest of those who were late on August 4-5. In addition, as the FAS clarifies, “representatives of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs were involved in the inspections.”

Now oil companies that fail to submit all documents on time face fines. Indeed, yesterday’s statement by the antimonopoly authorities stated: “Failure to provide the information necessary for the FAS of Russia to make a decision on a case of violation of antimonopoly legislation, in accordance with the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, is an offense that creates a threat to public administration.” “Individuals can be fined in the amount of 10-15 thousand rubles, and legal entities in the amount of 300-500 thousand rubles,” the service explained to Vremya Novostei.

“We have reached an understanding with the FAS. It’s just that a lot of documents had to be provided, and some had to be submitted after August 1,” Rosneft official representative Nikolai Manvelov told Vremya Novostei. The remaining oil companies refused to comment on the situation yesterday. However, as the FAS explained to the newspaper, “even if all the necessary documents are provided, this will be done after the deadline, so penalties will be applied.”

The topic of fighting cartels and conspiracies has recently become a signature issue for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. At first he was outraged by the unreasonably high prices for jet fuel. And the prime minister’s criticism fell not on the oil companies, but on the FAS, which overlooked these prices. But at the meeting on the development of metallurgy in Nizhny Novgorod, the “extreme” group was the Mechel group, which, according to Mr. Putin, “in the first quarter of this year sold raw materials abroad at prices two times lower than domestic ones, and therefore world", because of which the state missed the "margin in the form of taxes." The service also responded quite quickly to the prime minister’s statement and began an investigation against not only Mechel, which is suspected of “creating a shortage of certain grades of coking coal on the Russian market by redirecting supplies for export in order to gain the opportunity to inflate prices for this type of raw material, but also also imposing unfavorable contract terms for consumers,” but also another large metallurgical holding - Evraz Group.

The fact that the state has seriously taken control over compliance with antimonopoly legislation for businesses, which still get off with fairly minor fines even for gross violations, was demonstrated at the meeting of FAS head Igor Artemyev with Vladimir Putin on July 30. Mr. Artemyev then told the head of government that by the end of August he would submit draft amendments to the Criminal Code to the Cabinet of Ministers. More precisely, a new version of Article 178 “Prevention, restriction or elimination of competition”, violation of which was regarded as a crime of “minor gravity”. However, Igor Artemyev edifyingly cited the European experience as an example: “Up to ten years in prison for participation in cartels. And, accordingly, it is applied ruthlessly there.”

Kirill MELNIKOV