The contractor who inspected the Kirov bridges lost the lawsuit against the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the third time.

      We wrote earlier about the story with the bridges. Let us remind you that at the end of 2021, the first deformation of the bridge over the Moloma River occurred in the Kirov region. In August 2022, the "Road Committee" signed two contracts with the company "Tech-Terra" (Yekaterinburg) for the inspection of bridges located on the roads that could bypass this section. The price of each was 599 thousand rubles, with a total amount of 1.19 million rubles.

      Subsequently, the prosecutor's office conducted an inspection and identified a violation of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition," which manifested itself in the unjustified fragmentation of the procurement into two contracts with the same parties and conditions. The regional FAS office initiated a case.

      The contracts were declared invalid due to their conclusion with a single contractor without conducting competitions, and "Tech-Terra" was ordered to return all the money it received for its work to the federal budget. Disagreeing with this, the company appealed to the Arbitration Court of the Kirov region, demanding the annulment of the decision.

      The court of first instance denied the claim. The second arbitration appellate court did not change the decision.

      Recently, it became known that the parties met in the Arbitration Court of the Volga-Vyatka District. The contractor again tried to prove its case. In its opinion, the antimonopoly authorities did not provide sufficient evidence of a violation; moreover, the company, when signing the contract, had no idea that the customer had violated anything. Nevertheless, the court of the third instance ruled to leave the decision unchanged. If "Tech-Terra" does not appeal to the Supreme Court of Russia, it will have to return 1.19 million rubles.