On February 26, the Arbitration Court of Moscow upheld the Federal Antimonopoly Court (FAC) ruling that actions taken by the Russian Post could lead to a restriction of competition.
Previously, FAC found that Russian Post violated Article 10 of the law “On the Protection of Competition” (which deals with abusing market dominance) after examining its handling of the company JANZEN S.R.O.—the postal operator for Germany and the Czech Republic. The court ordered Russian Post to rectify the violation.
FAC received a petition from JANZEN claiming that the actions of Russian Post, a 100% state-owned enterprise, reducing and suspending services for processing international mail at Russian international postal exchange offices and violating the conditions of a contract with foreign operators for postal services - do not comply with antimonopoly legislation.
Under a contract from February 14, 2005, Russian Post renders services to JANZEN by receiving, processing, and clearing mail bound for Russian citizens through customs. However, since September 8, 2007, Russian Post has discontinued receiving and processing international mail from Janzen S.R.O. In October 2007, Russian Post informed the company in writing that only one shipment of international mail would be processed every two weeks.
FAC concluded that the actions of Russian Post—evading the execution of its contract with Janzen led to the inability of the company to render services. This hurt Janzen's interests and could lead to the restriction of competition in the Russian postal services market.
FAC says that Russian Post did not cite economic or technological reasons for evading the execution of its contract with Janzen.
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