FAS called upon OECD members for cooperation under the frame of countering cartels

Andrey Tsyganov drew attention of his foreign colleagues to the cardinal changes in the world economic trends and anti-cartel efforts of competition authorities

On 29 November 2016, a Round Table of the Working Group on Cooperation and Enforcement, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) raised an issue of possible review of the Recommendations on efficient countering hard core cartels, adopted by OECD Council on 25 March 1998.

According to Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov it appears that in 2016 new methods of cartelization of the economy have emmerged in comparison with 1998: participation in e-trading, use of intellectual property rights, possibility of instantaneous information exchange, and use of e-platforms. There are new control mechanisms within anticompetitive agreements. At the same time, many competition authorities have accumulated considerable experience of suppressing such violations. Therefore, improving the anti-cartel legal framework, it is necessary to study the practice of competition authorities as well as experience of cartel participants and include them in the Recommendations.

Andrey Tsyganov emphasized that toady significant volumes of information are available to the antimonopoly bodies from open sources, and in this context possibility of “soft” cooperation between experts working in competition authorities becomes especially important. According to him, it would open additional opportunities for correct interpretation of available data and a new view for “traditional” obstacles in international cooperation against cartels, such as absence of developed contractual basis, restrictions for exchanging confidential information, and complex decision-making procedures on joint investigations.

It is expected that the initial version of a report on amending the 1998 Recommendations will be discussed by OECD Competition Committee in June 2017.