To catch a digital mouse, there should be a digital cat

And we are growing such a “cat”. FAS has achieved special success countering cartels

That is how Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy outlined FAS goals in investigating anticompetitive agreements in the era of digitalization. The session “Investigating anticompetitive agreements in Russia and on cross-border markets” was on 27 October at the XI Annual Conference on “Antimonopoly Regulation in Russia”.

He said: “The main modern trends are digitalization and globalization. Under these conditions, all laws will be changed – antimonopoly, intellectual property, and much more. FAS is changing its legislative framework completely to work in the digital era, and the approaches and methods of proof also should change”.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy emphasized that today it is not possible already to investigate antimonopoly violations using old tools.

“Cartels have changed dramatically, they have long been in the could services, and agreements are made by programs with a high level of intellect”, pointed out Deputy Head of FAS. “The goal of the Antimonopoly Service is to form a clear response to these challenges”.

He emphasized that as new tools FAS has been long and efficiently using modern technological means for collecting evidence on cartels – software-hardware suites.

Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department Andrey Tenishev highlighted the issues of collecting and using evidence by antimonopoly bodies investigating cartel cases.

He said that such software-hardware suites have two parts: a data-collecting mechanism, particular, enabling to restore deleted information, and fixed equipment to analyze the files obtained in the course of inspections.

Regarding cross-border cases, Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department presented FAS practice on investigating international crimes. He reminded that FAS carries out such investigations and the violators stop their anticompetitive conduct and pay the fines, which is indicative of the efficiency of FAS efforts and its reputation. Russian antimonopoly body also actively cooperates with foreign competition authorities and has drafted the International Anti-Cartel Convention, which is been advocated at the international stage. “Hopefully, on 3 November 2017 the Council of the Heads of the CIS states will pass the draft Convention, which will facilitate development of international cooperation to counter cross-border cartels”, underlined Andrey Tenishev.