On Thursday, August 29, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine fined two limited liability companies UAH 679,998 for collusion at an auction for the sale of property of the state-owned enterprise Ukrspyrt. This was stated by the chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine Pavlo Kyrylenko, UNN reports.
Details
We are talking about GRINFIL LTD and WIND DANCE LLC (renamed to DANCE LTD), which in 2022 took part in the auction for the sale of certain property of the Stadnytsia site of the State Enterprise "Ukrspyrt", which was held by the Regional Office of the State Property Fund of Ukraine in Kyiv, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions. The amount of the contract concluded with Greenfield Ltd. as a result of the auction was UAH 81,744,000 including VAT
According to him, during the investigation of the case, the Committee found that the said business entities coordinated their behavior to eliminate competition between them during the auction.
The Committee proved that the Defendants jointly conducted business activities and knowingly agreed on the results of the auction.
As a result, WIND DANCE LLC, having offered the highest price offer of UAH 106,000,000 (excluding VAT), refused to sign the contract, and the privatization authority concluded an agreement with GREENFIELD LLC.
Addendum
In addition, the Committee fined VELDU LLC for unfair competition in the form of discrediting KRS TRADE LLC.
According to Kyrylenko, both companies sold products of the Chinese company VEAYE in Ukraine. However, VELDU LLC distributed a statement among its customers that KRS TRADE allegedly sells fake and counterfeit goods, forges customs documents using fictitious product manufacturer's articles.
This led to reputational and financial losses of KRS TRADE, for which the violator of competition law, VELDA LLC, was fined UAH 510 thousand 984
Recall
According to the State Audit Service of Ukraine, Ukrspyrt, the largest state-owned enterprise on the Ukrainian market, has completely ceased production activities since April 2023 and has a multimillion-dollar debt to the state budget and other creditors.