Antey is demanding 1 billion rubles from the Federal Fisheries Agency due to restrictions on crab fishing
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One of the main crab miners in Russia, the Antey Group of Companies, whose business was affected by restrictions on catching the resource in the Far East, is trying to recover damages from the Federal Fisheries Agency. The company filed a lawsuit against the regulator to terminate the relevant fishing agreement and recover more than 1 billion rubles. It will be difficult for the company to win the case, lawyers warn.
The structure of the fishing industry GC “Antey” filed a claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court against Rosrybolovstvo for termination of the agreement on fixing the share of the quota and collecting 1.01 billion rubles. unjust enrichment. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 18, the court said.
Antey LLC, according to the materials of the court and the Federal Fisheries Agency, demands the termination of the agreement dated August 2018, according to which the company was assigned 15.522% of the quota for Kamchatka crab in the Primorye subzone. Antey’s reporting for previous years states that such a quota was purchased at auction. In 2017, the company won the bidding for a lot with a share of the quota for Kamchatka crab in this location, offering 1.2 billion rubles. At the end of 2021, the residual value of the quota in Antey’s reporting was estimated at 820.3 million rubles.
According to a Kommersant source in the industry, the lawsuit was filed due to a ban on fishing for Kamchatka crab in this subzone, introduced in June 2021 to restore the population of the resource. The ban was then extended until the end of 2024. As Kommersant’s source explains, the restrictions make production impossible and maintaining the contract under these conditions is unprofitable. Antey and Rosrybolovstvo did not provide comments.
The Antey Group of Companies, according to its own data, owns quotas for catching more than 39% of crabs in the North and 12.5% in the Far East, the production volume in 2022 is 18.4 thousand tons. He also annually catches about 20 thousand tons of fish, grows scallops, oysters, and mussels. Among the owners of the group’s structures are Igor Mikhnov and Arkady Pinchevsky, who previously headed the board of directors of the Moscow vodka factory “Crystal”, and in 2005-2007 was the vice-governor of the Sakhalin region.
The President of the All-Russian Association of Fisheries German Zverev says that the company could have been pushed into a legal dispute by an increase in accounts payable. According to his estimates, the total liabilities of all crab miners could exceed 600 billion rubles. At the end of 2023, at the second stage of the “crab auctions,” Antey won bids for four lots worth more than 34 billion rubles, Fishnews reported. According to Mr. Zverev, the judicial precedent will increase the responsibility of Rosrybolovstvo for the quality of regulatory policy. “You can’t use one lever to sell quotas at auction, and use another lever to introduce a ban on ‘fishing’ for these quotas,” he points out.
Arbitration lawyer at the Vegas Lex law firm Georgy Belousov says that there are cases of termination of contracts when prohibitions are introduced by the state in judicial practice, for example, when a section of water surface is included in the list of objects declared natural monuments. To terminate the contract early, it will be necessary to prove that the introduction of restrictions on crab fishing could not be foreseen, the plaintiff cannot influence the lifting of the ban, and if the contract continues, the plaintiff will suffer losses comparable to or exceeding the benefits from concluding the contract, notes co-founder of the law firm atLegal Nikolai Titov.
But, according to the expert, it will be very difficult for “Antey” to win the case. The courts proceed from the premise that a contract can be forcibly terminated only in extraordinary cases, and a change in legislation in itself is not always recognized as a significant circumstance, he points out. According to Georgy Belousov, fisheries owners previously collected large sums from Rosrybolovstvo when auctions for quota shares were invalidated, which is why the regulator lost the basis for saving money. In this case, the issue of making a profit under the contract before the introduction of bans will be problematic, he points out. Managing partner of the Veta expert group, Ilya Zharsky, adds that the size of the stated requirements can also be reduced taking into account the benefits that Antey received during the period when crab fishing was possible.
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