OREANDA-NEWS  On 17 February was announced, that the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the Belgorod region (the Belgorod OFAS Russia) found that "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC violated Article 10 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition" (which prohibits abusing dominant position by economic entities). The company violated the law by fixing monopolistically high retail prices for petrol and diesel fuel sold at the service stations by "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC in the Belgorod region.

Earlier the Belgorod OFAS Russia organized an inspection of the operations of "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC. OFAS Russia established that the share of "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC on the retail petrol market in the Belgorod region exceeded 50%. "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC is controlled by "Rosneft" and its daughter company "Neft'-Activ" Ltd. Findings of the inspection and weekly monitoring of the oil products prices, carried out by OFAS Russia, proved that "Belgorodnefteproduct" OJSC was fixing monopolistically high retail prices for the distributed oil products. It enabled the company to achieve unreasonably high profit increase even with the growing purchase prices and expenses.

The Belgorod OFAS Russia initiated a case under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations (abusing dominant position on the goods market). Such violations are punishable by an administrative fine upon legal entities - from one hundredth to fifteen hundredth of the proceeds gained by the violator from the selling goods on the market where the violation was committed.