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Kiev court postpones hearing on Ukraine’s $6.8 bln claim to Gazprom until November

KIEV, October 31. /TASS/. The economic court of Kiev has set the date of hearing in case of Ukraine’s $6.8 bln claim to Russian gas giant Gazprom for November 21, the court’s judge Oksana Marchenko said.

"The hearing of the case has been postponed until November 21, 12:50 (1:50 p.m. Moscow time)," she said.

According to her, at the coming hearing the court will give the floor to the representatives of Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Committee (UAMC) and will give the parties an opportunity to ask each other questions.

"And after that we may complete the hearing of the case," the judge added.

At the hearing on Monday, a representative of the UAMC reiterated its claims to Gazprom. The committee finds that Gazprom was 140 days behind the date of payment of fine and that is why the company should also pay a penalty in the amount of 1.5% of the fine (180.928 bln hryvnia)

But under the law, the sum of penalty should not exceed the sum of the fine that is why UAMC asked the court to oblige Gazprom to pay the fine and penalty for the total sum of $6.8 bln.

On Monday, the court rejected the claims of the Russian party: to hold a meeting behind the closed doors, to attract Naftogaz of Ukraine, Ukrtransgaz and Gaztransit as third parties and to hold a panel hearing of the case due to its complexity.

On Monday, representatives of Gazprom said that the legitimacy of the UAMC’ decision was not proved in court and that earlier the defendant did not have an opportunity to dispute it. The lawyers of the Russian company said that the way of calculation of the fine and penalty is not clear and therefore it is necessary to involve relevant experts.

On October 5, UAMC filed a lawsuit to the Economic court of Kiev to oblige Gazprom to pay the fine and the penalty.

In January, UAMC fined Gazprom 85.966 billion hryvnia (about $3.4 billion) "for the abuse of the monopoly position" on the market of natural gas transit through the Ukrainian gas transportation system in 2009-2015. The notice of the decision taken by the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine was sent to Gazprom on February 12.

The date of fulfilment of the demand expired on May 4. Gazprom disputed the decision of UAMC bit the court rejected the appeal. All higher courts of Ukraine refused to uphold Gazprom’s complaint to declare the return of the appeal as illegal.