THE STATE DUMA PASSED A DRAFT LAW IN THE FIRST READING ON COORDINATING ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS TO THE CENTRAL DEPOSITORY WITH FAS

They concern, in particular, establishing the Committee of users of the services provided by the Central Depository

The State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation approved a draft federal law in the first reading that additional requirements set by the Bank of Russia to the procedure of establishing the Committee of users of the Central Depository’s services must be coordinated with the Federal Antimonopoly Service.

In 2018 FAS made changes to an order issued earlier by the antimonopoly body [1], that the Central Depository had to form a Users Committee with no less than three forth membership of the service consumers. Another condition was that persons affiliated with the Central Depository cannot exceed one forth of the Committee’s membership.

Additional requirements to the membership procedure of the Users Committee doe not contain special conditions enabling sufficient representation of all categories of client-depositories in the Users Committee.

“Absence of special requirements to the membership procedure of the Users Committee of the Central Depository prevented fulfillment of its main function – to be a counterbalance for the Supervisory Council of the Central Depository”, explained Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Kashevarov. “It was contemplated as some kind of a filter for decisions that can infringe the interests of service users, but the membership conditions did not allow to fully achieving this goal. The draft law will correct the situation legislatively. Now FAS shall be involved in setting the requirements for the Central Depository, particularly, in the part of the Users Committee membership procedure”.

Under the amendments introduced with the draft law, if the Users Committee does not approve an in-house document setting the rates for the services of the Central Depository, the document comes into effect no earlier than six months after approval by the Supervisory Council.

A deferred period for coming into effect the decisions not approved by the Users Committee gives additional opportunity for the users of the services of theCentral Depository to assess potential consequences of decisions of the Supervisory Council upon their operations and adopt them in accord with the decisions made.

The draft was prepared with an active FAS involvement in order to fulfill № 618 Order of the President of the Russian Federation “On the main directions of the state policy for competition development” of 21.12.2017 and is aimed at ensuring the necessary influence by the users of the services of theCentral Depository upon its tariff policy and prevent unreasonable prices for the services of theCentral Depository.

[1] № АК/35134 of 15.09.2011