vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #163 / Business / Reading article...

Airport passengers will soon pay a 100 new ruble ($16) airport fee when departing from Vladivostok, the Artyom City Duma decided recently.

The money will help pay the remaining $3.5 million needed to build the airport’s international terminal and upgrade the airport’s runway. Still, the Artyom city prosecutor has said the move may not be legal.

Vladivostok Avia, an air company and partial owner of the half-built international terminal, pushed the fee through the City Duma because it can no longer wait for delayed federal funding, said Vladivostok Avia Financial Director Aleksei Kotoshonov. Work on the terminal began in 1993 but stalled when backers ran out of funding, he said.

It is Vladivostok Avia’s second attempt to collect fees at the airport. A 1996 decree adopted by the Krai Duma charged a 66,000 ruble fee for a month before Krai Proseutor Valery Vasilenko struck it down, writing in his protest that the decision was “a gross violation of legal norms.”

Because the federal government regulates all airport taxes, “local governing bodies don’t have the right to impose a fee like this at the airport,” said Alexander Lashen, deputy chairman of the Krai Transportation Committee.

“Any decision like that must come from the federal government,” he said.

Kotoshonov said the new fee is legal because it would be collected and administered through the Artyom City Duma.

But documents obtained by the Vladivostok News show that the City Duma would turn over responsibility to Vladivostok Avia, asking the company to create a bank account, collect fees, and spend them. The Duma decided that the fee would pay for the runway, but also for necessary equipment for Vladivostok Avia, according to its resolution.

If so, the new law might break the same monopoly laws that prevented its adoption in 1996.

Kotoshonov said, however, that lawyers in the Artyom Duma had analyzed the situation and agreed that a legal foundation exists for such a tax.

The local prosecutor’s office is looking into the case, and, though no decision had been made, there were “some doubts about it,” said Artyom City Prosecutor Alexei Daryavin.

Other airlines criticized the vote by the City Duma, claiming that they were not included in the decision.

“It will create an unpleasant additional expense for passengers,” said Transaero spokesman Alexander Nezhelskoy.

“I don’t know one person who would be happy about paying additional money [at the airport].”