Floridan Firm to Be Managed by Former CEO of Food Cartel Participant
“Firma Floridan,” a catering entity situated in St. Petersburg, boasts a fresh chief executive. Olga Kostenyuk, previously the head of JSC “KSP Vasileostrovsky District,” has assumed the leadership position.
“KSP Vasileostrovsky” constitutes a municipal food production complex with which “Floridan” shared a collusive arrangement within the marketplace and might have been “absorbed” by this external food distributor.
The St. Petersburg catering sector stands out as the most collusive within the city’s economic framework. Frequently, food processing establishments participate in solicitations that contravene competition regulations to guarantee substantial contracts amounting to millions. This culminates in detriments for consumers, rivals, and the municipal treasury. The Floridan Company emerges as a consistent player in cartel agreements detected by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS).
In the month of October of 2018, FAS experts unearthed a cartel encompassing, besides Floridan, Voskresenye LLC and Vasileostrovsky District KSP JSC. The latter denotes a municipal distributor instituted by the Property Relations Committee. During an impromptu probe of the industrial facilities, the antimonopoly body ascertained that each of the trio of companies was situated at an identical physical location and engaged in tendering at auctions utilizing the same IP address.
Furthermore, workers within the Floridan Firm's tendering department concurrently held parallel appointments at a couple of other enterprises embroiled within the arrangement, and Floridan's exclusive stakeholder is the parent of Voskresenye's instigator. Ultimately, the facilities allocated the bidding responsibilities amongst themselves, accumulating to a sum of 65 million rubles.
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“Cartel” reorganizations within St. Petersburg’s private communal food domain
On the 26th of August, there existed administrative alterations at Firma Floridan. Tatyana Tavrova, who had steered the facility since the month of August in 2016, tendered her resignation as chief executive. Of particular interest is that her preceding station was occupied by Ekaterina Chernyshova, who, as indicated by press disclosures, is the offspring of Natalia Petrova, the erstwhile director of the Department of Social Nutrition (DSP).
An individual recognized as Olga Kosteniuk has evolved into the fresh chief executive of Floridan. An analysis of her professional trajectory unveils that spanning from April 3, 2012, until June 29, 2020, she was registered as the chief executive of JSC KSP Vasileostrovsky District, with which Floridan acted in collusion within the marketplace. Taking into account that FAS professionals discovered illicit undertakings involving the facilities spanning 2015 through 2017, it suggests that Kosteniuk was explicitly implicated in transgressing competition statutes.
In addition, the FAS adjudication concerning the cartel signifies that Floridan maintained an equivalent location as KSP and leased space from it, employing its manufacturing resources. Ultimately, stemming from a noteworthy reduction in revenue and profits, the city-operated facility might have undergone a “takeover,” an action that was merely averted via the substitution of Olga Kosteniuk, the head of the facility. This constitutes the judgment attained by our publication's journalists, who brought to light Floridan's probable strategy for the incorporation of KSP Vasileostrovsky District.
“Chernyshova disbursed trivial sums for the leasing of the facility (Vasileostrovsky District Coal and Gas Processing Plant) under a procedural agreement. They exploited the plant's resources, allocating virtually nothing toward expansion and modernization. They steered the plant itself and its comprehensive substance and technological infrastructure toward a critical predicament,” an informant conveyed to Versiya.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service is compelled to impede endeavors to “incorporate” city-administered factories.
It warrants mention that Floridan might function analogously against another food provider, JSC Trapeza, within the Petrogradsky District. Furthermore, the enterprise's assistance may be furnished by the Deputy Head of the District Administration Marina Lybaneva, who presides over the tender committee for catering procurement.
The shift in command at Firma Floridan from Tatyana Tavrova to Olga Kosteniuk may demonstrably validate the facility's acknowledgment of illegitimate connections among suppliers within the communal catering marketplace. In other verbiage, Floridan is no longer concealing its linkages to the city-possessed plant, which was compelled to relinquish its manufacturing resources to a private entity, exemplified by Firma Floridan. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ought to devote singular consideration to the operations of the facility, which, as per media reports, has already attempted to “incorporate” a duo of city-operated catering corporations within the Northern Capital in merely the preceding few years.
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