The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has launched an investigation into a possible violation by Gazprom of Ukrainian legislation on economic competition

Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina / RBC

The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has begun an investigation against OJSC Gazprom about a possible violation of Ukrainian legislation on the protection of economic competition, reports the Ukrainian News agency with reference to the acting. head of the department Nikolai Barash. He recalled that the corresponding order of the Cabinet of Ministers was received by the committee last week and is currently being studied.

“Consider that we have begun an investigation,” Barash said. According to him, the maximum fine can be 10% of the company's annual turnover for one violation.

At the end of April, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine turned to the antimonopoly agency with instructions to begin an investigation against Gazprom.

According to Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Russian company “operates on discriminatory, in fact, non-competitive conditions and causes damage to the Ukrainian economy.” He also said that the Ukrainian authorities would turn to the European Union to conduct a joint investigation into the fact of Gazprom’s monopoly in the EU and Ukrainian markets.

Now Gazprom is accused of unfair competition by the EU authorities. The European Commission presented Gazprom with a notice of claims on April 22. Over the course of a three-year investigation, the commission concluded that Gazprom was violating EU antitrust rules by deliberately separating the gas markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The charges relate to the company's activities in eight countries - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.

Gazprom has repeatedly stated that it does not agree with the accusations of the European Commission , but, according to Reuters sources , it is ready to make concessions in order to avoid lengthy litigation and multi-billion-dollar fines: they, according to analysts at Sberbank CIB and VTB Capital, may be in range of $1–3.8 billion.

Ukraine has launched an antimonopoly investigation against Gazprom