ST.-PETERSBURG, April 19 - RAPSI. The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Commercial Court will hear on May 16 a case of antitrust law violation by major city museums, which denied an individual entrepreneur the right to conduct excursions, according to the court records.

The State Museum of St. Petersburg History contested the watchdog's decision, while Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Pavlovsk, Tsarskoye Selo (Tzar's Village) and the Peterhof Palace museum preserves have been involved in the case as third parties.

The city's local antimonopoly branch, found the museums in breach of competition law in December.

The case was initiated by a businessman whom the museums prevented from entering into excursion services contracts. The denials were made in part because the museum's contractual campaigns had ended for 2011, they said. The museums added that the businessman could not be a party to such contracts and had to act as a tourist agent under agreement with a tour operator.

The watchdog considered the arguments groundless as the law does not ban individual entrepreneurs from conducting excursion activities.

The regulator also holds that the individual was unable to learn via open sources the timeframe of the museum's contractual campaigns, which was one reason for the denial.