Press-release of 09.07.2010

Concerted actions can be established even without documentary evidence of an agreement to exercise them, stated Alexander Kinev, the Head of the Anti-Cartel Department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) on 8th July 2010 at the Russian - American seminar on antimonopoly enforcement.

His presentation was about cartel detection.

"The public danger of cartels", says Alexander Kinev, "is in restricting competition by entering into secret illegal agreements between competitors. Such agreements are aimed at infringing consumer interests and gaining unfair excessive profit".

The main consequences of cartel operations include:

- artificially stimulated growth of prices;
- absence of new products of better quality;
- reduced consumer choice of products;
- lack of incentive for economic entities to innovate and increase efficiency;
- preventing entry of new competitors, market stagnation;
- undermining public trust in the basics of market economy and government policy in this filed.

Alexander Kinev mostly focused his presentation on the methods of proving collusions. "Evidence means any factual data important for correct solution of the case", pointed out Mr. Kinev. "Direct evidence means they directly confirm existence or absence of the fact of violations - documentary evidence (contracts, agreements, protocols, statements, letters, etc.) and witness statements. Indirect evidence indicates collateral facts, that are in cause-effect or other relations with the facts of violations".

Direct evidence can be obtained through inspections of economic entities, requests of documents (information) and explanations; indirect evidence can be formed by analyzing market trends and behavior of economic entities.

Conclusions on the presence of a condition that should be established to find out concerted actions - that each of the involved economic entities knew in advance about such actions - can be made on the basis of factual circumstances of such actions. "For instance, among other circumstances concerted actions can be indicated by such a fact that different market participants exercised them relatively simultaneously and in a uniform manner without any objective reasons for such behavior", emphasized the Head of the FAS Russia's Anti-Cartel Department.