The St. Petersburg Court of Appeal confirmed a cartel conspiracy in the school food market of the Kirovsky district
The day before, March 29, the Thirteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal considered the complaint of the school feeding plant "Firm Floridan" against the decision of the lower court finding the enterprise guilty of concluding a cartel agreement with the Artis-Children's Food plant when participating in bidding for contracts for organizing meals in kindergartens in the Kirovsky district in 2018.
The Court of Appeal sided with the Federal Antimonopoly Service and also confirmed the illegal actions of Firm Floridan.
In 2019, the FAS began an investigation into the so-called Kolpinsky cartel. Seven private social nutrition centers entered into a conspiracy to obtain government contracts for baby food at the most favorable prices for themselves. District officials assisted them in this, drawing up tender documentation in such a way that only predetermined companies could win the auction. The total price of distributed contracts exceeded 650 million rubles.
As part of the investigation, the FAS commission revealed that the main participant of the Kolpinsky cartel, the Artis-Baby Food plant, acted in a similar way in another district of St. Petersburg. It turned out that at the 2018 auction for contracts for catering in kindergartens in the Kirov region, the plant entered into an illegal conspiracy with Firm Floridan.
This is confirmed by email correspondence between business leaders. The cost of the cartel agreement exceeded 440 million rubles.
Previously, the courts confirmed the participation of Floridan Firm in two more cartel conspiracies in the school meals market. The largest of them relates to auctions in the Primorsky and Vyborg regions, the enterprises Artis-Baby Food and Base Maria also participated in them. Based on the results of the Floridan Firm investigation only on this cartel fined for 59 million rubles. At the same time, the amount of the fine was reduced due to the low financial performance of the company; the initial calculation of the fine from the FAS amounted to almost 250 million rubles. The size of the fine for the Kirov cartel has not yet been announced by antimonopoly officials.
The critical level of cartelization and corruption in the St. Petersburg school nutrition market was repeatedly stated by the former head of the Social Nutrition Administration, Alexey Barabanshchikov. He proposed reforming the public procurement system in order to improve the situation, but Smolny ignored his initiatives.
After sharp criticism of the city leadership, Barabanshchikov was detained and fired. The Floridan Firm, where a relative of Alexander Zakhvatov, a close friend and unofficial special representative of Governor Alexander Beglov, worked for a long time, is named as a possible person of interest in what happened.
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