The highest costs were the costs of paying interest on bank loans. The Tariff Service refused the application. It considered the expenses to be economically unjustified and set the tariff at a significantly lower rate than the client requested.

We have filed an administrative claim against the Tariff Service in the Astrakhan Regional Court to recognize the resolution on the required gross revenue and tariff invalid. In the lawsuit, we proved that the client took bank loans to eliminate cash gaps and spent them on the needs of the client s branch in the Astrakhan region. We also proved that there are legal grounds to accept these expenses provided for by regulatory acts of the electric power industry.

The decision of the Astrakhan Regional Court dated 26/4/2022 and the appellate ruling of the Judicial Board for Administrative Cases of the Third Appellate Court of General Jurisdiction dated 31/8/2022 denied the client s request to include interest on loans in the tariff. We filed a cassation complaint.

On 29 December 2022 Fourth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction decided to make changes to the above said judicial acts. Thus, the conclusions that planned expenses for the year 2021 were economically unreasonable and cannot be confirmed by the documents, as stated in the article "Loan Interest (Loan Servicing Costs)" in the amount of 824,037,000 RUB, were excluded from their motivational part. The adjustments of uncontrolled expenses based on actual values for the year 2019, as stated in the article "Loan Interest (Loan Servicing Costs)" in the amount of 663,339,240 RUB, also were made.

ABY s Managing Partner Yuri Pustovit and Partner Sergey Radchenko represented the client s interests in the Fourth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction.