Gazprom investment. On 5 July 2006, the Federal Law, "On Gas Export", was passed, nearly unanimously, by the State Duma and on the 7 July 2006, by the Federation Council. On 18 July Putin signed the new legislation and on 20 July 2006, the law was published. It gave Gazprom the exclusive right to export natural gas from Russia. On 4 September 2012, the European Commission, a Brussels-based competition watchdog, announced an anti-trust investigation into Gazprom's activities. This was based on "concerns that Gazprom may be abusing its dominant market position in upstream gas supply markets." On 21 May 2014, in
Gazprom from his position as the Chairman of the Gazprom board. The Russian Government's stock in Gazprom gave Putin the power to vote out Vyakhirev. Chernomyrdin and Vyakhirev were replaced by Dmitry Medvedev and Alexei Miller. They were Putin's prior employees in Saint Petersburg. Putin's actions were aided by the shareholder activism of Hermitage Capital Management Chief Executive Officer William Browder, and the former Russian Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov. Miller and Medvedev were to stop asset stripping at Gazprom and to recover losses. Itera was denied access to Gazprom's pipelines and came close to bankruptcy. Itera agreed to return stolen assets