Lilia Belyaeva on the prospects of a statutory definition of antimonopoly compliance

On 9 September 2016, Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Financial Markets, Lilia Belyaeva, took part in a Round Table on “Risk-Sustainable Models of Banking Business: Infrastructure and New Opportunities” at the XIV International Banking Forum - “Banks of Russia — the XXI century”, organized by the Association of Regional Russian Banks in Sochi.

Attendees included representatives of the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Economic Development, credit organizations and ranking agencies.

The main items on the agenda concerned, in particular, the role of compliance strategies in sustainable development of the modern banking: tools for decreasing credit and security risks and regulation of bank transformation processes.

Lilia Belyaeva outlined draft amendments to the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” that give a definition of antimonopoly compliance and the minimum requirements to it.

For instance, comparing Russian and international experience, the FAS representative pointed out that in foreign practices implementing antimonopoly compliance by economic entities is not binding; while the current project of the Russian model of antimonopoly compliance puts emphasis on its mandatory nature for certain companies, primarily with prevailing state and municipal participation in the authorized capital. According to Lilia Belyaeva, the amendments specify that for other market players the issue of implementing antimonopoly compliance will remain at their discretion.

The Round Table participants were also informed about the requirements to organizing antimonopoly compliance, specified in the draft amendments, particularly, the requirements on adopting a special act by an economic entity with provisions to evaluate the risks of violating antimonopoly compliance; the measures designed to reduce the above risks and to control the functioning of the compliance system in general.

Deputy Head of FAS Department for Control over Financial Markets paid special attention to the amendments to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations, according to which implementation and effective functioning of antimonopoly compliance, particularly, through eliminating violations, shall constitute the grounds for reducing fines imposed for those violations.

Summing up the report, Lilia Belyaeva stated: “A statutory definition of antimonopoly compliance and the rules for its functioning will be the next step in developing the system of antimonopoly control and creating conditions for preventing violations of the antimonopoly law. The antimonopoly authority expresses hope that the proposed decreasing of the risks of such violations and antimonopoly sanctions, in its turn, will become an incentive for market participants to implement antimonopoly compliance”.