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The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service fined 5.28 billion rubles ($180 million) for abusing its dominating market position and warned that it could expect similar fines soon.
The service found the firms in violation of the law in July, accusing them of deliberately driving up wholesale prices for gasoline and other oil products in the first half of 2009. The service has already fined TNK-BP and Neft a total of 9 billion rubles for similar violations.
Earlier Tuesday, the service’s head, Igor Artemyev, had announced that fines would be levied on both Rosneft and LUKoil.
“Today, the decision will be made to fine oil companies Rosneft and LUKoil. [The fines] will be large,” he said at a news conference.
The service made no other announcement Tuesday about the size of LUKoil’s fine.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said the company would study the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service’s decision, adding that the oil producer will act in accordance with Russian law, Interfax reported.
The announcement came a day before new rules went into effect allowing the watchdog to prosecute executives for collusion.
The law, set to go into effect Wednesday, will allow the service to go after individual executives found guilty of three offenses in three years. If convicted by a court, they could face up to six years in prison.
The new rules along with other recent revisions to the anti-monopoly law have enabled the service to hit back hard against what it sees as unwarranted high prices on the part of gasoline suppliers.
The watchdog began a concerted effort to bring down prices for refined oil products, including gasoline and jet fuel, after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned its leaders in July 2008 to “wake up” or find new work.
It currently has about 200 active court cases against oil companies and “will start a new series of cases if needed,” Artemyev said in June, adding that the current increase in oil prices was likely happening through agreement among the dominant companies.
LUKoil and Rosneft were both fined a cumulative 1 billion rubles by the service in 2008, but the companies were able to successfully contest the fines in court. The service has the authority to fine violating companies from 1 percent to 15 percent of their sales on the market where the violation occurred.
Gasoline prices fell throughout most of the first half of the year, bottoming out in May at 17.55 rubles per liter. The watchdog claims that the decreases in price were slower than they should have been, given the falling price of oil. Since May, increasing prices for crude oil have pushed up local gasoline prices by nearly 20 percent, to 21.74 rubles per liter.
