Himmedsnab

History

2022: FAS fined cartel participants in the supply of medical equipment for 31.5 million rubles

On October 10, 2022, the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in Primorye announced the imposition of fines on four companies, which, according to the department, participated in a cartel conspiracy in the supply of medical equipment to regional institutions.

We are talking about PTF Corpus LLC, Equipment and Service LLC, Vostok LLC and Himmedsnab LLC, which were found to have violated antimonopoly laws. Due to the fact that the cartel participants actually refused to compete, the supply of medical equipment to medical state institutions of the Primorsky Territory was carried out at inflated prices. For the conclusion and implementation of the cartel conspiracy, the organizations were imposed negotiable fines in the total amount of 31.58 million rubles, the OFAS of Primorye said.

FAS

The working fine for PTF Corpus LLC amounted to 20,032,803 rubles, Equipment and Service LLC - 6,970,720, Himmedsnab LLC - 3,001,053, Vostok LLC - 1,576,746 rubles.

As follows data from the FAS decision base, auctions for the supply of medical equipment to hospitals and clinics in Primorye were held in 2018-2019. Purchased, in particular, devices for plasmapheresis, ULTRASONOGRAPHY a defibrillator and other equipment, clarifies "."Kommersant

The total initial (maximum) price of contracts amounted to 146.7 million rubles. During the auction, the companies submitted several price proposals and subsequently refused to compete with each other, and also used a single infrastructure during the auction. The result of these actions was a decrease in the initial price of contracts by only 0.5-1.5%. Due to the fact that the cartel participants actually refused to compete, the supply of medical equipment to medical state institutions in the region "was carried out at inflated prices," the OFAS concludes.^[1]

2021: Accusation of participation in the cartel for 146.7 million rubles

At the end of October 2021, the Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (OFAS) in Moscow recognized four suppliers of medical equipment in the Primorsky Territory - PTF Corpus LLC, Equipment and Service LLC, Vostok LLC and Himmedsnab LLC - cartel participants. According to the regulator, the conspiring companies entered into an oral anti-competitive agreement with participation in 17 tenders totaling 146.7 million rubles.

As the FAS found out, during the auction, the companies submitted several price proposals and subsequently refused to compete with each other, and also used a single infrastructure during the auction. The result of these actions was a decrease in the initial maximum price of contracts (NMCC) by 0.5-1.5%. As a result, medical equipment in the clinics of the Primorsky Territory was delivered at inflated prices, the antimonopoly authority said.

FAS found 4 seaside suppliers of medical products guilty of cartel worth 146.7 million rubles

As follows from the decision of the FAS, the basis for initiating the case was the appeal in June 2019 of Business Assistant LLC about possible signs of violation of antimonopoly laws by the supplier of PTF Corpus, which is the distributor of Fresenius medical equipment.

The FAS employees who conducted the investigation found out that the filing of applications by companies and financial statements to the Federal Tax Service was carried out from a number of identical IP addresses, the names of the accounts that edited the documents coincided in the properties of some application files, and the applications themselves from all participants came with a difference from 5 minutes to 3.5 hours with a declared period of two to three weeks. In addition, financial ties were discovered between companies in the form of contracts for the supply of consumables and medical products during the period of the auction under consideration, for example, it turned out that the director of Vostok Maria Volodarskaya worked as the first deputy general director at PTF Corps^[2]

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