The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of Russia believes that Severstal, NLMK and MMK overestimated prices for their products in a non-market way. This was announced in an interview with RTVI the head of the department Maxim Schaskolsky.
He noted that companies violated antitrust laws. Market conditions did not contribute to raising the price, Shashlysky stressed. “We have 100 volumes for each enterprise, we study this situation. Therefore, it may also be surprised here. But this is still in the process, this is the case of 2022,” added the head of the FAS. He promised that fines in relation to metallurgists would be huge, more than in Google, which was previously fined more than seven billion rubles.
In April, the FAS analyzed the position in the flat rolled market and opened the case with respect to the three metallurgical companies – Severstal, MMK and NLMK. The department considered that companies supported monopoloil high prices for hot rolled rolling. Prior to that, the first deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov accused the metallurgists in the “fattening” of the state for 100 billion rubles and threatened the measure.
In 2021, the Russian list of the Forbes billionaire rating was headed by the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the co-owner of Severstal Alexey Mordashov (a businessman belongs to 76.4 percent of the company’s shares), the state of which is estimated at $ 29.1 billion.