Kyiv court delays consideration of Ukrainian anti-trust agency's UAH 172 bln claim against Gazprom until Dec 5
Kyiv's economic court has postponed the consideration of a claim filed by Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee (AMC) for levying a fine on Gazprom and penalty for a total sum of UAH 172 billion, or $6.6 billion, and the new date is set for December 5, 2016.
The consideration of the case was rescheduled in order for the sides to familiarize themselves with additional materials which were given to them regarding the points of argument, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported from the court meeting.
The official fired rate as of November 21 is UAH 25.895 per U.S. dollar.
As Interfax-Ukraine reported earlier, Ukraine's AMC on January 25, 2016, decided to fine Russia' gas giant Gazprom UAH 85.966 billion (about $3.3 billion) after determining that Gazprom had abused its monopoly position in transiting gas through Ukraine. However, Gazprom argues that the Antimonopoly Committee does not have the authority to regulate transit through Ukraine.
However, on the last possible day, April 12, Gazprom lodged its claim with Kyiv's economic court to rule null and void the AMC's decision.
The Kyiv court returned on April 13, without consideration of Gazprom's claim against the AMC, saying that the claim had improperly been prepared, as the authority of the person who signed the claim had not been confirmed.
The ruling of Kyiv's appeal court dated May 18, 2016 in the case was left unchanged, and Gazprom's counterclaim filed on May 4 was dismissed.
Gazprom filed a counterclaim on June 7 to Ukraine's higher business court that on July 13 did not satisfy the claim declaring valid the ruling of a lower instance court and the appeal court.
AMC head Yuriy Terentyev says that the committee would go to court to recover the charged sum worth UAH 85.966 billion from Gazprom after it used all opportunities to appeal the AMC's decision in Ukrainian courts.
On September 13, the judicial panel of the Trial Chamber on commercial cases declined to accept Gazprom's claim to review the ruling taken by the Higher Economic Court on the AMC"s fine.
In addition to the fine, Gazprom is facing penalty for the failure to pay the fine on time, and the total sum is UAH 172 billion.
