Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service head Igor Artemyev
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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FAS Knocks on Evraz’ Door after Mechel
Federal Antimonopoly Service head Igor Artemyev has told a Russian television news channel that the Evraz group is on his agency’s list of companies in which violations have been uncovered in connection with its investigation of the market for coking coal. That investigation was begun after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the Mechel group at a meeting in Krasnodar and ordered the FAS and other agencies to take action. Artemyev told the Vesti channel that a meeting will be held at the FAS today and “some decision might be made.”
A Evraz spokesman told the RBC information agency in reference to Artemyev’s statements that Evraz exported less than 1 percent of the coking coal it produced in the first half of this year. “We provided the FAS with all the information it requested. In the first half year of 2008, Evraz delivered beyond the confines of Russia less than 1 percent of the coking coal it produced, that is, 17,000 tons. Those deliveries were made to Evraz’ Ukrainian coke chemical enterprises.”
Since then, however, the FAS has begun cases against Evraz Holding and Raspadsky Coal for abusing their dominant positions on the market, according to a press release issued by the agency. Taken together, OAO Mechel, OOO Raspadsky Coal and OOO Evraz Holding control more than 50 percent of the Russian coal market.
The FAS press service noted that charges were made against the entire chain of realization, from the producers of the raw material to the trading houses that sold it and against their managing companies. The FAS found that prices for coking coal began to rise on the domestic Russian market in the fourth quarter of last year. Prices charged by Evraz and Raspadsky approximately foubled between September 2007 and April 2008, the FAS claims.
Evraz Group is an integrated mining and metals company. It includes three of Russia’s leading smelting enterprises: the Nizhny Tagil, West Siberian and Novokuznetsk Metals Combines, as well as the Palini and Bertoli companies in Italy, Vitkovice Steel in the Czech Republic, Oregon Steel and Stratcor in the United States and Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corp. in South Africa. Its receipts in the first quarter of the year were $4.23 billion and its EBITDA was $1.39 billion.
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