OREANDA-NEWS. August 29, 2012. Moscow Arbitration Court pronounced legitimacy and reasonableness of a FAS decision that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise of the Ministry of Internal Affairs violated the antimonopoly law, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia. 

On 20th January 2012, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that the Ministry of Internal Affairs violated Part 3 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” by assigning a function for protecting facilities subject to state protection to “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise. The FAS Commission also found that “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise violated Clause 1 Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” by fixing monopolistically high prices for protecting facilities subject to state protection in the Lipetsk region in 2010 and Q1 2011.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise filed a lawsuit challenging the FAS decision.

In September 2001 – January 2011, the rate per hour for security services increased by 100%. When one of the petitioners – “Olhsansky Karier” CJSC disagreed with increasing prices, “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise notified the company about an intention to remove posts from protected facilities. Thus, 120 tons of explosives could have been left without protection.

“When the Ministry of Internal Affairs assigned “Okhrana” Federal State Unitary Enterprise the functions for protecting facilities subject to state protection, the purpose of which is to provide vital needs and security of the state and population, it created critical situations. Therefore, actions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which are aimed towards commercializing a government function, violate the competition law, do not meet the government objectives and result in violating competition on adjacent markets”, the Head of FAS Department for Administrative Reform and Control over Fee-Based State Services, Lyudmila Solontsova, commented the FAS decision.