Russia’s Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeals ruled Friday to cancel a ruling of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) obliging Russian cement producer Eurocement to cease its alleged antitrust violations.  The FAS’ Director Igor Artemyev said Friday that the service plans to appeal the ruling. Eurocement controls 13 cement plants in Russia and two plants in Ukraine.  
 
In October 2005 the FAS said that Eurocement had used its monopoly market position to excessively hike cement prices.  The FAS then ordered Eurocement to pay a fine of 1.915 billion rubles for antitrust violations.  The FAS also obliged Eurocement to lower its weighted average cement price to no more than 1361 rubles per tonne and set its maximum cement price at 1497 rubles per tonne. The prices exclude value added tax (VAT) and railway transportation tariffs.  
 
Earlier the Moscow Arbitration Court of Appeal rejected Eurocement’s appeal in January following a similar ruling of the Moscow Arbitration Court.  In November 2005, the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the FAS’ ruling and obliged Eurocement to pay a 50,000-ruble fine for failure to provide information on its expenses and prices.