Russian court upholds antitrust body’s ruling to fine Eurocement
Moscow Arbitration Court has upheld the ruling of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, or FAS, to fine Russian cement producer Eurocement Group 50,000 rubles, FAS said in a statement Tuesday.
The regulator earlier obliged Eurocement to pay the fine for failure to provide information on its expenses and prices. Eurocement challenged the ruling with the court.
In addition, last month FAS obliged Eurocement to pay a fine of 1.915 billion rubles for antitrust violations, FAS said earlier. The company had used its monopoly market position to excessively hike cement prices and failed to substantiate these prices, the FAS said. Eurocement Group is to lower its weighted average cement price to no more than 1,361 rubles per tonne and set its maximum cement price at 1,497 rubles per tonne, the FAS said. The prices exclude value added tax (VAT) and railway transportation tariffs.
Currently, Eurocement Group controls nine cement plants across Russia and the FAS says that the company’s market share exceeds 35%. The company does not agree with the FAS’ figure. (28.7745 rubles – U.S. $1.