Systematic violations of antitrust laws by a company are punishable by ineffective fines and do not entail personal liability, the regulator complains

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation (FAS) will seek the dismissal of the general director of the largest interregional distribution grid company in the country, OJSC Moscow United Electric Grid Company (MOESK), Andrei Konovalov. This statement was made by FAS Director Igor Artemyev on Thursday.

The regulator is dissatisfied with Konovalov’s actions in connection with MOESK’s numerous violations of the law on protection of competition, the head of the department explained.

“There is such a company - MOESK, which already has about 30 fines... What are we going to do? We will try to ensure that (in May) there is no director there,” RIA Novosti quotes Artemyev . The head of the FAS clarified that all identified violations relate to discrimination against consumers when connecting to electrical networks.

A request to disqualify Artemyev in court is already being prepared. Information about violations - warnings and documents on fines - will also be sent to the management of IDGC Holding, Artemyev added. According to him, MOESK does not take “appropriate measures to comply with competition laws.”

The head of the FAS did not rule out criminal prosecution of Konovalov in the event “if approaches to the case are changed.” According to information from the antimonopoly service, despite the fact that all the regulator’s fines are confirmed in the courts, the amount of sanctions is significantly reduced - from the “several millions” required by the plaintiff to “hundreds of thousands of rubles” - the minimum acceptable level. As a result, the lenient nature of the punishments does not correspond to the scale of the violations, Artemyev complained: “here we are seeing a complete, primitive monopoly.”

The last time the FAS department for the Moscow region opened a case against MOESK for violating the terms of connection to electric distribution networks was in January 2012.

At the same time, the company’s board of directors at the beginning of March of this year extended Konovalov’s powers as general director until March 11, 2014.

OJSC Moscow United Electric Grid Company serves consumers in Moscow and the Moscow region. The main shareholders of MOESK are IDGC Holding (51%), Gazprom (31%) and the capital government (8%).

53-year-old Konovalov has headed MOESK for two years - since March 2010. At the post, he replaced Yuri Trofimov, who resigned in the fall of 2009. The manager has been working in senior positions in the electric power industry since the late 1980s. From 1995 to 1998, he headed the NPF KGES-Penfo and was a member of the board of directors of OJSC Krasnoyarsk HPP. Then, for 10 years, he served as director of economics and finance at the station.

In 2008, the manager first became the first deputy general director, director for economics and finance of OJSC Irkutskenergo, and then headed the company. From the end of October 2009 to April 2010, Konovalov was a member of the board of JSC RusHydro.

FAS demands dismissal of the head of MOESK