Russia Found Apple Guilty Of Price-Fixing

The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) is Russia’s monopoly watchdog and it just found Apple guilty of supposedly making local retailers coordinate with each other in order to make sure that prices are manipulated and skewed in the company’s favor. Apple has since denied the price-fixing accusation, but the organization had recently pronounced the American tech giant guilty anyway.

This case goes as far back as August of last year when the FAS first accused Apple of price-fixing, BGR reports. At the time, the iPhone maker insisted that it was the local retailers that decided how much its units are going to cost customers. Based on what the FAS managed to uncover during the seven months of investigation, however, it concluded that this was not the case.

In the statement that the agency released, the FAS found it difficult to believe that the pricing structure of all the different retailers just happened to be initiated at the same time by accident. The move affected practically all of the iPhone models that were available for sale in the country.

“The investigation revealed that from the start of official sales in Russia Apple iPhone 5s models, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus the majority of resellers have installed on them the same prices that are recommended of “Apple Rus”, and supported them for about 3 months,” the statement reads.

In a report by the Financial Times, it would seem that most of the blame really lies on the local branch of Apple and the tech giant apparently provided the FAS with everything it asked for. At least Andrey Tsarikovsky, the deputy head of the agency seems satisfied that Apple has learned its lesson.

“The company has adopted the necessary measures to eliminate violations of the law and is pursuing a policy to prevent similar violations in the future,” Tsarikovsky said.