Court Rules MegaFon Must Pay Penalty for Ignoring Watchdog?s Order

MOSCOW, Mar 28 (Prime-Tass) -- A Russian arbitration court has ruled that the Stavropol Region subsidiary of mobile operator MegaFon must pay a 200,000 ruble penalty for ignoring an order of Russia?s antitrust regulator, the Federal Antimonopoly Service said Wednesday.

The Arbitration Court for the Krasnodar Region said that the regulator had acted properly in fining Mobicom-Kavkaz, the MegaFon subsidiary, for not setting equal tariffs for all mobile operators effective May 1, 2006.

The antimonopoly service in April 2006 found Mobicom-Kavkaz and StavTeleSot, a subsidiary of Russia?s second largest mobile operator VimpelCom, guilty of violating antitrust law by setting higher tariffs for calls to and from users of MTS, Russia's biggest wireless operator.

The regulator ordered the two companies to set the same tariffs for MTS as for other operators but both companies ignored the order and appealed in an arbitration court.

In February, the court ruled that VimpelCom's subsidiary must reduce fees for calls to and from MTS.

MTS, VimpelCom and MegaFon are Russia's three largest mobile operators in terms of subscribers, and control around 85% of the Russian market, according to consulting agency Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M).

(26.0180 rubles ? U.S. $1)

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Posted to the site on 28th March 2007