Yerevan /Mediamax/. Committee for the Protection of Economic Competition of Armenia made a decision today to fine “Alex Grig” Company for 3mln AMD.

Mediamax reports that at SCPEC today’s session, they presented facts of unfair competition from the part of “Alex Grig”. According to the representative of the Committee, as a result of a monitoring, they revealed that certain vodkas produced by “Alex Grig” in fact copy other brands, produced by Ukrainian companies.

According to Vahagn Gasparyan, such actions by the company may cause confusion among consumers, and this is a sign of unfair competition and is banned by the law on “Economic Competition”.

The Committee made a decision to fine “Alex Grig” for 2.5mln AMD and withdraw from sale and stop further production of vodkas of the mentioned trademarks. The Committee also made a decision to fine “Alex Grig” for 500 thousand AMD for untimely provision of documents to the Committee for realizing a monitoring of sugar market.

Lernik Hovhannisyan, who represents the interests of “Alex Grig”, stated that the Committee does not have the authority to decide upon issues, related to similarity of trademarks. According to him, this issue may be raised by the owner of the trademarks, that is to say, the Ukrainian company, and should be considered in court. At that, Lernik Hovhannisyan refused to answer the question whether the actions of “Alex Grig” are signs of unfair competition or not and stated that the company will dispute the decision of the Committee.

“Alex Grig” is controlled by Armenian MP Samvel Aleksanyan and is considered factual monopolist in a few markets of goods at once.