The specialised inter-district court for administrative offences in Aktobe found JSC 'SNPS-Aktobemunaigas' guilty of violating antimonopoly legislation.
According to the press service of the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition (APDC), the company abused its dominant position in the market for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), imposing unfavourable terms of cooperation on counterparties.
It emerged that the gas supply contracts set a payment term of no more than three banking days, which contradicts current regulations allowing payment within five days. Clients who did not agree to the strict conditions were denied access to supplies.
Furthermore, the additional agreements contained technologically unjustified requirements: tanker trucks were to be filled to only 85% of capacity. According to market participants, this created logistical difficulties and artificially limited shipment volumes, placing the company's partners at a disadvantage.
In addition, auditors found that JSC 'SNPS-Aktobemunaigas' had unjustifiably restricted the production of LPG supplied by road.
The court upheld the findings of the antimonopoly authority, resulting in the company being fined 36,752,688 tenge.
In accordance with the APDC's directive, the enterprise's average daily production of liquefied gas was increased to 114 tonnes, and the volume of road shipments for August totalled 3,532 tonnes.
Other serious violations have also been noted in the gas supply sector. Previously, the department of the Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) for the Almaty region completed an investigation into the embezzlement of funds from JSC 'Almatygazservice-Holding', which supplies natural gas in the region.
It was reported that the suspects — the director, his deputy, a senior operator and a senior controller — were embezzling money from the cash register. Over two years, they stole 168 million tenge.