Competition Practice of EPAM led by Natalia Korosteleva has successfully defended the interests of Evraz within the price discrimination investigation initiated by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia.

The proceedings against Evraz were initiated by the Federal Antimonopoly Service in September 2012 doubting the dominant position abuse through unjustified fixing of different prices for different consumer groups, the main issue being the much lower prices for RZD and foreign customers. Evraz faced a penalty at the rate of 7.5% of the turnover (RUB 1.5 bn).

Competition Practice team of EPAM managed to justify the admissibility of the company’s pricing practices proving that the rest of the market should not be compared to the prices for RZD: the export market should not be compared to the domestic one in regard to the major characteristics and has to be considered separately; all the discounts applied by Evraz were compliant with the legislation.

On June 6, 2013 the Service ended the proceedings admitting the relevance of the company’s pricing practices.

The client’s interests were represented by Senior Associate Evgeny Bolshakov, Associates Grigory Shafeev and Natalia Gavrilova, Junior Associate Maria Kruchkova under the lead of Natalia Korosteleva, Partner in charge of Competition Law Practice at EPAM, and Dimitry Afanasiev, the Chairman.