The Vilnius Regional Administrative Court heard the appeal on Monday and will issue its ruling on 17 December, Sigita Jacinevičienė-Baltaduonė, the court's spokeswoman, told BNS.
Lietuvos Dujos is asking the court to annual the fine or at least reduce it. The company has said that it considers the regulator's decision to fine it to be unfounded and that it believes that if vague legislative formulations occur, they should be interpreted in the company's favor.
In September 2011, the price commission told Lietuvos Dujos to cut its regulated operating expenditure in 2012 by 15.44 million litas. Among the irregularities found during an inspection of the company was that it had wrongly received 9.3 million litas from transmission and distribution operations until 2005.
The regulatory authority then, for the first time, applied an article of the Energy Law that provides for fines of up 1 percent of annual revenue from a particular licensed activity. Previously, it had applied the Code of Administrative Offences and, therefore, imposed only symbolic fines on companies' officials.
