ANDREY TSARIKOVSKIY: RUSSIA CAN FORM A REGISTER OF CARTEL PARTICIPANTS

Speaking at the international session of the XI International Conference – “Antimonopoly Regulation in Russia”, Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy said that Russia can form a Register of cartel participants

He pointed out that Germany has a similar register, which is, however, much broader since it also includes companies with m ala fide business reputation.

Lina Taltseva, a researcher at Baker McKenzie, made a report on the prosecution trends for cartels in Germany. Commenting the report, Andrey Tsarikovskiy highlighted the following trend: first, the number of criminal cases against cartels goes up and then began to decrease due to tough enforcement practice.

Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Andrey Tenishev pointed out that recently a norm on criminal liability for cartels and other competition restrictions has been used.

“Criminal liability for cartels was introduced in 1996 but for a long time there were only two sentences under this norm. 23 criminal cases are under investigations under Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 4 of them are already submitted to Court”, informed Andrey Tenishev.

Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department emphasized an increase in cases on bid-rigging cartels between government officials (ordering parties) and companies. These cases are accompanied by abuse of office by representatives of the authorities.

Andrey Tenishev reminded about the first sentences underArticle 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. For instance, Mayor of Vladivostok is imprisoned for 15 years for an anticompetitive agreement, an ex-minister of the Perm region - for 7 years.

He also explained that FAS is involved in investigating digital cartels. All auctions and tenders are transferred to electronic sites, where electronic traces are left so FAS has big scope of work.

There are several cases on illegal coordination of operations when companies apply digital tools to coordinate operations of companies on the markets (for example, the case against LG).

According to Andrey Tenishev, it needs more time to see that bid-rigging decreases while the number of criminal cases increases.

Other participants of the session of “International experience of countering cartels. Transformation of the antimonopoly compliance system – from paper to active modalities” included: Anton Subbot, Partner at Baker McKenzie Law Firm; Dr. Natalia Mosunova, Antimonopoly Policy Centre, East Anglia University; Vitaly Dianov, Partner, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (Russia) LLP; Vitaly Pruzhansky, Partner, RBB Economics; Tamara Merebashvili, Deputy General Director, Head of Corporate and Property “Inter RAO”; Theodor Thanner, Federal Competition Authority, Austria.