The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has said that Evraz's coal subsidiaries, Yuzhkuzbassugol, Trading House EvrazResource, and Trading Company EvrazHolding, and Raspadskaya Coal Company's sales subsidiary Raspadsky Ugol have violated antimonopoly legislation (paragraph 6, article 10 of the Federal law ‘On Protection of Competition') by charging different prices for coking coal concentrate depending on the customer.
Accordingly, the difference between the contract prices of coal concentrate did not depend on the volume of supplies and transportation costs.
FAS said that the Evraz and Raspadskaya companies will have to pay fines in the range of one to 15 percent of their turnover in the market in the previous year.
The case was opened in July 2010 as a result of analysis of the coking coal concentrate market in the period from January 2009 to June 2010, and involved five Russian coal companies, including Severstal's subsidiary Vorkutaugol, for which no evidence of antimonopoly legislation violation was found.
"The difference in prices to various consumers of the same product ranged from 20 to 48 percent. The companies did not provide FAS with convincing arguments on the cause of such a difference," FAS said.