OREANDA-NEWS. The specialists of antimonopoly practice of Muranov, Chernyakov & Partners law firm assisted OJSC Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System (FGC UES) with proving in the Ninth Commercial Appellate Court the unlawfulness of the penalty amounting to 145 mln. rubles imposed by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (case No. А40-5038/2014). The said penalty was imposed due to FGC UES' “refusal” to extend the agreement with a major power supply company for transfer of electric power (FGC UES and its defenders do not agree that such a violation took place).

As their basic arguments, the attorneys stated that the Federal Antimonopoly Service mistakenly determined the geographic borders of the market of violation, which that company had allegedly committed. It resulted in erroneous calculation of the company's revenue for imposition of the turnover penalty.

The thing is that, despite the fact that the client had an opportunity to acquire FGC UES services in specific, geographically restricted points of connection to the power grid, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia used for calculation of the penalty FGC UES revenue generated in the entire territory of 22 constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

The appellate court confirmed the necessity of reducing the penalty to the minimum amount fixed by law - 100,000.00 rubles.

In April 2014 the RF Ministry of Economic Development prepared an opinion (its wording is also available in legal databases) stating about groundlessness of such practice of penalty calculation and proposing to fix strict relevant rules in the legislation.

According to Oleg Moskvitin, the head of antimonopoly practice of Muranov, Chernyakov & Partners law firm, the new court practice will contribute to forming the system of penal sanctions imposition, which will at all times be reasonable and adequate to the asserted violations.