05 December 2019

Competitors for procurement contracts for the Saint Petersburg Metro proved to be too close to each other. Over the recent years, a small group of legally linked companies has won over 20 contracts worth over 480 million rubles at tenders initiated by the state municipal company Sankt-Peterburgsky Metropoliten.

The total amount of government contracts is valued at 5 billion rubles. In November 2019, Sankt-Peterburgsky Metropoliten inked a contract worth 150 million rubles with Metrodetal Trading House. Transtech company competed with Metrodetal for the right to supply Swiss-made Radox cables to Sankt-Peterburgsky Metropoliten, but lost. Fontanka.ru found out that the companies which for many years had competed at procurement tenders for Saint Petersburg Metro are owned by the same people. And the investigation leads to the top management of the state enterprise.

Pyotr Mashoshin, a lawyer from Khrenov&Partners, noted that in accordance with the Federal Law on protection of competition, agreements between economic agents operating at the same markets that may cause increase, reduction or maintenance of bidding prices are regarded as cartel agreements.

The full article may be read here (in Russian).