MOSCOW, March 23 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has imposed a 36 million rubles ($620,000) fine on companies involved in price fixing at pharmaceuticals procurement tenders, the agency says in a statement on Thursday.

Earlier, the FAS has found Jodas Expoim, Farmakoppola, and SaTiKom guilty of creating a cartel, which operated in Moscow, as well as Kursk, Orenburg, Tambov, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Penza, Saratov, Irkutsk, and Leningrad regions, alongside with Republic of Udmurtia and Stavropol Krai for over three years.

According to the FAS, the defendants in the case pleaded guilty of entering into an anti-competitive agreement utilizing a leniency program in the framework of which the person first to confess to the FAS about the cartel is not to be held liable for this administrative offence, whereas the second and the third persons to follow are subjected to minimum fines.

Therefore, the FAS says in the statement, the cartel participants were fined at the minimal rate set by the law; otherwise they might pay many-fold more.