Fas did not punish the companies of the restaurateur Prigozhin, recognized as a cartel. Evgeny Prigozhin and military supplies

Companies associated with the "president's chef (Evgeny Prigozhin)", recognized by the FAS as a "cartel", received regular contracts from the Ministry of Defense for 585 million rubles.

This is evidenced by documents from the public procurement website. In May 2017, the FAS caught these and a number of other organizations in a cartel conspiracy just during the state procurement of the Ministry of Defense. The documents say that Ars-Service LLC, Spetsresurs LLC, TechIncom LLC and Component LLC participated in the competition for servicing the objects of the Ministry of Defense in South Ossetia, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia (according to the Kontur.Fokus service) . As a result, the ministry plans to conclude contracts with Ars-Service, Component and Spetsresurs.

According to the data of the Kontur.Fokus system, the Component and TechIncom companies have a common founder and CEO - Anton Sergeevich Nikulichev.

In May 2017, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) of Alexei Navalny published an investigation that talked about the creation of a cartel by Yevgeny Prigozhin to receive government contracts from the Ministry of Defense. The material also mentioned the name of Nikulichev, and the companies he founded, which participated in the auctions of the Ministry of Defense.

FBK reported that companies associated with Prigozhin received more than 23 billion rubles thanks to the cartel. Of the proceeds, about 8 billion rubles were stolen. According to the Fund, there are dozens of interconnected companies “more than 40 of which are Prigozhin’s companies, and six are structures of the Ministry of Defense.” With their help, Prigozhin received more than 180 billion rubles.

In August 2016, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) initiated a cartel case against Component LLC, Megaline LLC, Koralklin LLC, Millennium Clean LLC, Polar Bear LLC, Ecobalt LLC, LLC ASP, Spetsresurs LLC, Ruskompleks LLC - some of them were mentioned in the FBK investigation. The FAS considered that the previous auctions in which these companies participated were held with violations.

Subsequently, the FAS recognized the fact that these companies created a cartel. In addition, the service conducted proceedings against Ars-Service on violation of antimonopoly law, but it was terminated because it was not possible to find evidence of the company's participation in a cartel agreement.

“FAS recognized the companies associated with Prigozhin as a cartel”

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) recognized a cartel arrangement of several companies that are associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. A case of violation of competition law was initiated by the antimonopoly agency in August 2016.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) admitted that companies associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin organized a cartel and violated antitrust laws. This was reported to RBC by the lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) Lyubov Sobol.

FAS announced today the operative part of the decision. The motivational part will be issued within the next week. “And within two months, based on the practice of the FAS, a decision will be made on the administrative fine. At the moment, the fact of the cartel is recognized, ”said Sobol.

The decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service included companies controlled by Prigozhin, as well as those not controlled by him - Polar Bear, Koralklin LLC, Sobol noted.

According to the press service of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, limited liability companies "Polar Bear", "Koralklin", "Millennium Klin", as well as a group of persons as part of LLC Ecobalt, "Component", "RusComplex", "Spetsresurs" and "Megaline » violated antitrust laws by entering into an anti-competitive agreement at the auction of the Ministry of Defense. The percentage of reduction of the initial maximum price in this case was no more than 1.5%. In total, the cartel agreement was revealed at nine open auctions of the Ministry of Defense, the total amount of the initial maximum contract price for them amounted to 1.8 billion rubles.

“As part of the administrative case, we will take into account the fact that one of the companies made a confession, that is, voluntarily reported to the antimonopoly authority information about the conclusion and participation in the anti-competitive agreement and the refusal to participate in it further,” the press service of the FAS quotes the words Deputy Head of the Antimonopoly Department Alexei Dotsenko.

The Commission of the FAS Russia decided to terminate the proceedings against Ars-Service, Prometheus, Inzhklinservis and TSA due to the lack of evidence of their involvement in a cartel.

The FAS filed a case against the listed companies in August 2016. Bidding, where violations were made, was held in 2015 for the provision of services for sanitary maintenance, technical and comprehensive maintenance of the barracks and housing stock of military camps, as well as universities and other institutions of the Ministry of Defense.

FBK reported that companies associated with Prigozhin created a cartel, which was able to receive 23.5 billion rubles on contracts from the Ministry of Defense. Of this amount, according to the head of the fund, Alexei Navalny, 8 billion rubles were stolen. This cartel became the largest. FBK claims that dozens of companies are involved in the scheme itself, through which Prigozhin “received more than 180 billion rubles. on contracts of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and its subordinate organizations.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) discovered a cartel between companies associated with businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin at the auction of the Ministry of Defense, which took place in 2015. FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol announced this on her Facebook after the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service

“Today, a decision was made according to which the FAS Russia agreed with the arguments of the FBK and recognized that companies controlled by Putin’s chef Yevgeny Prigozhin acted illegally at the auction of the Ministry of Defense,” Sobol wrote.

On May 19, the Alexei Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation into how Prigozhin, who is referred to by the media as Vladimir Putin's personal chef, is connected to companies suspected of creating a cartel on Defense Ministry tenders. “The 23 billion cartel is what we were able to document. In total, more than 180 billion rubles passed there, ”Navalny noted.

The Moskva agency, citing the press service of the FAS, reported that the agency recognized Polar Bear LLC, Koralklin LLC, Millennium Klin LLC and a group of persons within limited liability companies Component, Ecobalt, " RusComplex”, “Spetsresurs”, “Megaline” violated the antimonopoly legislation (clause 2, part 1, article 11 No. 135-FZ “On Protection of Competition”).

The agency clarified that the percentage of reduction in the initial maximum contract price in all cases was no more than 1.5%. The total amount of the initial maximum contract price for them amounted to about 1.7 billion rubles.

Sobol noted that the FAS ignored the FBK's argument that "all companies were coordinated by Concord Management and Consulting LLC, Prigozhin's main firm." According to Sobol, this company does not appear in the decision of the antimonopoly service.

The FAS decided to dismiss the case against Ars-Service LLC, Prometey LLC, Inzhklinservis LLC, ASP LLC due to the lack of evidence of their participation in a cartel, the agency notes.

“Administrative fines, judging by the practice of the antimonopoly service, will be imposed on companies within two months,” Sobol added.

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Through this cartel, Prigozhin, having agreed with the officials of the Ministry of Defense, stole money from the defense order.

In total, more than 23 billion rubles were disbursed, at least a third of which, according to our estimates, was stolen.

So far, the largest cartel case considered by the antimonopoly service concerned fraud for 3.5 billion rubles.

In our case, 23 billion and, it turns out, this is the largest cartel, the machinations of which have come to a formal trial.

On Monday, the antimonopoly service is to make a decision on the cartel and, unfortunately, there is a possibility that the FAS will get scared, merge and greatly soften the decision. It will bring Prigozhin's main firms out of the fine or something like that.

The practice of recent years, alas, shows that there is only a lot of talk and threats, and as far as people close to Putin are concerned, they immediately receive minimal fines or the case is generally put on the brakes.

All the details are below, but I’ll say right away that the cartel for 23 billion is what we were able to document. In total, more than 180 billion rubles passed there. [...]

How we discovered the cartel conspiracy of Prigozhin's firms:

On these grounds, we applied to the FAS Russia on January 26, 2016 to attract these companies to the Russian Antimonopoly Service. In August 2016, the FAS Russia officially initiated an antimonopoly case, which is still being considered, the next final meeting is on May 22, 2017.

We managed to get acquainted with the antimonopoly case in the FAS Russia, which is being conducted at the request of the FBK. From the case, and more specifically from the responses of various organizations to FAS requests, we learned even more connections between the companies and received the most important document, which made it possible to reveal the entire network of Prigozhin's firms - an extract from the bank account of the Megaline company.

Evidence after reviewing the case at the FAS Russia:

Same IP

All firms are connected to each other via IP. All cartel companies accessed electronic trading platforms from the same IP address: 37.77.135.2.

This IP address belongs to Concord Management and Consulting LLC, registered in the name of Evgeny Prigozhin's mother - Violetta:

The Tenzor company, in response to a request from the FAS, provided information with the mails of all cartel companies that they indicated when sending official reports. It turned out that all postal addresses are registered on one domain name, which belongs to Prigozhin's company Medstroy LLC - office-vp.spb.ru. Contact tel. domain owner: +7 812 6770585, which coincides with the phone number of Concord Power Plant LLC, another Prigozhin company.

Identical bids for auctions and responses to FAS inquiries

All companies responded to the FAS inquiry regarding collusion with approximately the same answer: we do not keep records of the auctions in which we participated at that time, we cannot provide an answer.

Documents from the applications generally match verbatim. For example, from auction No. 0173100004515000637, the applications for participation in the auction by Ecobalt LLC and RusComplex LLC contain more than 250 items of the same manufacturers, and the names of the manufacturers are spelled the same, up to the presence of a space before the comma after the name. An example is "GK Sevkabel LLC, Russia". Therefore, it can be assumed that the first parts of the applications were typed by one person, then copied, and only the font changed. For comparison: the application of a participant who was not a member of the cartel was drawn up in a completely different way.

Similarly, made "under the blueprint" and documents on the approval of a major transaction.

It can be seen from the diagram that the Concord Management and Consulting company transferred funds to the Megaline account, which then used them to secure its bids in tenders and the bids of other firms controlled by Prigozhin.

In legal language, this is called illegal coordination of participants in economic activity, which is strictly prohibited by law. And for the restriction of competition by collusion in general, the participants face a criminal case.

On the basis of these data, FBK filed an application with the FAS Russia to engage Concord Management and Consulting LLC for coordinating the economic activities of cartel members.

In addition, other interesting facts surfaced:

The sole owner and head of one of the companies - RusComplex LLC - is a person who is now in a pre-trial detention center on a case of fraud on an especially large scale.

Here is a copy of the decision of RusComplex LLC, from the materials of the FAS Russia case, where the general director and the sole participant (owner) of the company are indicated:

Despite the fact that the owner and manager are in a pre-trial detention center, the company continues to win in tenders, from the moment it received a power of attorney, it received state contracts in the amount of 99.5 million rubles.

Another surprising fact: another company that received a total of 3.4 billion rubles from the budget has only a table and an armchair in its authorized capital, literally. In the event of non-fulfillment of obligations to the army and bankruptcy (which is not uncommon with Prigozhin's companies), the state will only get this rubbish.

In addition, thanks to the documents of the antimonopoly case, we were able to establish connections between Prigozhin's companies and customers (the structures of the Ministry of Defense).

We are sure that Prigozhin would not have been able to obtain government contracts for such an impressive amount without direct support and collusion with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense.

This is evidenced not only by a general understanding of the mechanisms for obtaining multibillion-dollar state contracts in our country, but also by specific facts.

A number of Prigozhin's companies have branches and have offices in a closed area - military units of the Ministry of Defense.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service refused to bring to administrative responsibility the companies of St. Petersburg entrepreneur Yevgeny Prigozhin, which the agency had previously recognized as a cartel, according to the FAS website. Attention to this decision drew Lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Foundation Lyubov Sobol.

On November 8, Pavel Remesyuk, head of the department for organizing interaction with law enforcement agencies of the FAS anti-cartel department, issued a ruling in which he refused to initiate cases against the St. Petersburg companies Megaline, Component, Ecobalt, Spetsresurs and Ruskompleks an administrative offense under part 2 of Article 14.32 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (conclusion of an agreement between the organizers of the auction and (or) customers with the participants in these auctions, if it leads or may lead to the creation of preferential conditions for any participants).

The reason for this decision was the fact that in March 2017 they submitted documents to the Federal Antimonopoly Service “confirming the inclusion of these economic entities in one group of persons.” The content of these documents is unknown, since they are marked "for official use." Companies associated with Prigozhin were the first to submit such documents, unlike the other three companies featured in the FAS decision on the cartel. Thus, they performed the actions specified in the note to Article 14.32 of the Code of Administrative Offenses and allowed them to be released from liability, the FAS decided.

“At the time of the appeal, the antimonopoly body did not have all the relevant information and documents about the administrative offense committed. At the same time, the above-named persons refused to further participate in the agreement, ”the FAS definition says.

FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol believes that the note is misinterpreted: "If you carefully read the note, the company's application should have been submitted before the FAS found out about the administrative offense committed." FBK lawyer Valery Zolotukhin applied to the Federal Antimonopoly Service with information about the cartel back in January 2016, in the same year a case was initiated on violation of antimonopoly law. According to Sobol, Prigozhin's companies could have been fined at least 899 million rubles.

Back in May of this year, the FAS that Prigozhin’s companies organized a cartel, which in 2015 participated in eight auctions for the provision of services for the sanitary maintenance and maintenance of military camps, educational and military medical institutions and adjacent territories, as well as sanatoriums and resorts complexes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense. The companies were recognized as a cartel, including on the basis of documents that they themselves provided in March 2017.

At the same time, the FAS agreed that the cartel included only five companies associated with Prigozhin, but not Prometey LLC, ASP LLC and Ars-service LLC, which were also in the group of enterprises that provided documents on their participation in the cartel .

According to FBK, Prigozhin's company received 23 billion rubles in government orders from the Ministry of Defense.

19.05.2017, 13:38

Hooray. We discovered and documented the existence of a cartel created by the already famous "Putin's chef" Yevgeny Prigozhin. Through this cartel, Prigozhin, having agreed with the officials of the Ministry of Defense, stole money from the defense order.

In total, more than 23 billion rubles were disbursed, at least a third of which, according to our estimates, was stolen.

To date, the biggest cartel case handled by the Antimonopoly Service has involved fraudulent 3.5 billion rubles.

In our case, 23 billion and, it turns out, this is the largest cartel, the machinations of which have come to a formal trial.

The practice of recent years, alas, shows that there are only a lot of talks and threats, and as far as people close to Putin are concerned, there are minimal fines right away or the case is generally put on the brakes.

All the details below, but I’ll say right away that the cartel for 23 billion is what we were able to prove. documented . In total, more than 180 billion rubles passed there.

We are terribly proud of this work of ours, especially since we have a personal grudge against Prigozhin - we believe that it is he who stands behind the husband of Lyubov Sobol, an FBK lawyer who solved the "cook's case" together with our other lawyer Valery Zolotukhin.

Thanks to everyone who supports FBK and makes such investigations possible. If you are satisfied with our work, then it's time to express this by donating your labor ruble.

Watch the video about the case, and below all the documents.

How we discovered the cartel conspiracy of Prigozhin's firms:

We noticed an oddity: the same companies - OOO Component, OOO Spetsresurs, OOO RusComplex, OOO Ecobalt — justified the initial prices of the contracts. And they started looking at them. It turned out that all these companies were created recently and also received billions of rubles directly on government contracts from the Ministry of Defense. Together with the companies ASP LLC, Prometey LLC, Ars-Service LLC and Megaline LLC, they participated in a cartel conspiracy to monopolize the service market for Russian military camps. A total of 23 tenders of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for a total amount of 23552765956 rubles.

Now, a year later, we have one hundred percent proof that all these companies were, at least until the end of 2015, under the control of Evgeny Prigozhin, and were managed through the parent organization - Concord Management and Consulting LLC.

First evidence:

Prior to receiving contracts, only one of them was known - the Megaline LLC company, all other companies were not remarkable.

Even at the first study of the activities of these companies, it becomes clear that the companies are screens and face values and in themselves do not look like solid companies that can receive billions in state contracts. Not a single firm had experience in servicing housing and communal services for military camps. Some of the companies were created shortly before receiving contracts.

According to open sources, it was possible to obtain enough data on the ties between the companies: a certain Anton Sergeevich Nikulichev founded Ecobalt LLC and COMPONENT LLC, the former general director of RusComplex LLC Maxim Vyacheslavovich Moskalev is the real director of Megaline LLC.

LLC "ECOBALT" and LLC "COMPONENT" were originally established at the addresses through the wall, that is, in neighboring offices: 195271, St. kt Kondratievsky, 75, 4N.

In addition, four out of six companies received surprisingly amicably licenses from the Ministry of Emergency Situations to operate. The license numbers are in order, they were issued on the same day: Megaline LLC - license No. 78-B / 00703 dated April 22, 2015 Spetsresurs LLC - license No. 78-B / 00704 dated April 22, 2015 RusComplex LLC - license No. 78 -Б/00705 dated 04/22/2015 ECOBALT LLC - license No. 78-Б/00706 dated 04/22/2015

The amount of reduction of the initial maximum price in the tenders was the same - minus 1% of the initial price of the auction.

Evidence after reviewing the case at the FAS Russia:

Same IP

All firms are connected to each other via IP. All cartel companies accessed electronic trading platforms from the same IP address: 37.77.135.2.

This IP address belongs to Concord Management and Consulting LLC, registered in the name of Evgeny Prigozhin's mother - Violetta:

Identical bids for auctions and responses to FAS inquiries

Documents from the applications generally match verbatim. For example, from auction No. 0173100004515000637, the applications for participation in the auction by Ecobalt LLC and RusComplex LLC contain more than 250 items of the same manufacturers, and the names of the manufacturers are spelled the same, up to the presence of a space before the comma after the name. An example is "GK Sevkabel LLC, Russia". Therefore, it can be assumed that the first parts of the applications were typed by one person, then copied, and only the font changed. For comparison: the application of a participant who was not part of the cartel was drawn up in a completely different way.

Similarly, made "under the blueprint" and documents on the approval of a major transaction.

From the antimonopoly case, we managed to obtain a bank statement on the Savings Bank account of the Megaline company.

The extract showed that:

There are dozens of companies linked financially by loan agreements, more than 40 of which are Prigozhin's companies, and six are structures of the RF Ministry of Defense.

Some of the companies participating in the loans are customers from the state - these are GUZHF LLC and its branches (the "granddaughter" of the Ministry of Defense, maintains housing stock in military camps) and JSC "GU Housing and Public Utilities" ("daughter" of the Ministry of Defense, is engaged in housing and communal services military camps and current repairs of objects of the Ministry of Defense). So, for example, ASP LLC transferred a total of 300,000,000 rubles to GUZHF LLC (OP Moskovskoye) under a certain loan agreement, and a total of 42,500,000 rubles to GU Housing and Public Utilities JSC. Both GUZHF LLC and GU Housing and Public Utilities JSC gave and received substantial loans from Prigozhin's companies after the conclusion of state contracts.

The loan agreements had a special purpose and were connected specifically with the contracts of the Ministry of Defense, since they have the name “KZhF loan agreement”, where KZhF apparently means “barracks and housing stock”.

Part of the loan transactions was aimed at transferring money from one Prigozhin's firm to another of his own firm in order to later deposit these funds as security for bids for participation in the auction.