Philip Morris International (PMI) has filed a lawsuit for bilateral investment arbitration against the government of Ukraine in connection with the unfair, in their opinion, decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) to fine them UAH 1.2 billion in the case of the wholesale distributor Tedis Ukraine, according to a press release from PMI.

"The decision of the committee is a clear violation of the investor's rights. We believe that this dispute between the investor and the state will have an extremely negative impact on the investment attractiveness of Ukraine, as well as on the country's reputation as a whole," CEO of Philip Morris Ukraine Kostas Salvaras said.

According to him, the lawsuit was filed on December 21 at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Washington, DC, the United States) in connection with the violated, according to the applicants, bilateral agreements on mutual protection of investments with the United States and Switzerland.

PMI recalls that in 2010-2011 the AMCU allowed Tedis to gain control over the majority of tobacco wholesalers, but in 2019 the same committee decided that PMI's Ukrainian subsidiaries and other global tobacco producers and Tedis colluded for the sake of Tedis' establishing monopoly on the market.

"The committee's decision violated the rights of PMI companies in accordance with the agreements between the United States and Ukraine and between Switzerland and Ukraine on a fair and equitable treatment of their investments in Ukraine and protection from arbitrary and discriminatory actions due to harm," the statement reads, in which the AMCU's actions are called illegal, illogical and arbitrary.