Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service filed yet another lawsuit against Evraz Group. The company is suspected of setting monopoly vanadium-containing raw materials prices and of discriminating its consumers, RBC daily reports.

The complaint against the company was placed by Chusovskoy Metallurgical Plant; the plant was unhappy with the fact that Evraz’s Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise set monopoly prices and practiced different price policies for different consumers of vanadium-containing raw materials.

Now Kachkanar Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise is Russia’s only producer of iron ore with vanadium content; this ore can be used for manufacturing highly durable kinds of steel.

The FAS detected in the course of an inspection that in 2009 and in the first half of 2010, the enterprise’s produce prices went up by 244%, whereas the prime cost only increased by 10% to 15%. What is more, the prices set for different groups of consumers differed by 100% to 110%. The company’s key customers are a number of Russian and Ukrainian enterprises. In Russia, these are Chusovskoy Metallurgical Plant and Evraz Group’s Vanadiy-Tula. It turned out that the prices set for Evraz’s daughter enterprise and for the Ukrainian companies were much lower than those set for their rival, Chusovskoy Metallurgical Plant.

As a result, Evraz was declared to have violated three paragraphs of Article 10 of the Competition Protection Act: it introduced differing prices for various customer groups, it set monopoly prices, and it discriminated its customers, head of FAS’s Industrial Control & Defense Industry Division Maxim Ovchinnikov told RBC daily.

If Evraz is found guilty of all these offenses, the company will have to pay a fine that will amount to 1% to 15% of its vanadium-containing raw materials sales turnover. Evraz Group reports they haven’t received any official papers on the instituted legal proceedings yet. Chusovskoy Metallurgical Plant refused to provide any comments, the newspaper says.