For several years, UK MDU LLC, Kola Road Management LLC and Avtomir LLC actually divided among themselves contracts for all road work in the region. Each company received contracts for work in a certain zone, without short-selling in bidding for other territories and without creating competition. The main figures in this story were the co-owners of road construction organizations Stanislav Kuznetsov and Alexander Bulatov.
Information about the conspiracy and its participants surfaced in 2019, when a new governor, Andrei Chibis, came to the region and began to understand the problems of the industry.
The court’s decision put an end to the next stage of this work. In the coming days, an on-site inspection of the Prosecutor General’s Office will begin in Murmansk, which will check the entire road industry: from managers and owners of contractor companies to officials (mostly former) who helped businessmen. And such a check will most likely lead to the emergence of a whole bunch of criminal cases.
This is a natural result of three years of work by local authorities to combat illegal monopoly in the market. Here they had to face information attacks, threats and direct pressure. Now that the Center, represented by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Supreme Court, has intervened in the process, the process should go faster, and affiliated businessmen will not be able to let everything go on the brakes.
Supreme Court: Kuznetsov and Bulatov firms are participants in a cartel conspiracy
Photo: Murmanskavtodor
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
