MOSCOW, August 24 (RAPSI) – The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case on violating the law “On Protection of Competition” by several companies at the Defense Ministry’s auctions, the service’s statement reads.

According to the antimonopoly agency, Russia’s Defense Ministry held several open auctions for provision of services involving sanitary and integrated maintenance of barracks and quarters in military towns, higher educational institutions and other subordinate authorities.

The winner of each auction was one of nine parties to an alleged anti-competitive agreement.  Firms “Component”, “Megaline”, “Coralclean”, “Millennium clean”, “White Bear”, “Ecobalt”, “ASP”, “Spetsresurs”, “Ruscomplex” are named among agreement participants.

Depreciation percentage of initial peak price of a contract reached no more than 1.5% on each occasion. Thus, state contracts for a total amount of 18 billion rubles ($278 million) have been concluded with a slight decline of trigger price, the FAS stated.