Sergey Puzyrevskiy: FAS issued 2166 warnings in the first six months of 2017

The enforcement practice of FAS and Crimea OFAS was publically discussed in Simferopol

FAS is involved in Control-and-Supervision Reform overseen by Minister Mikhail Abyzov.

The new system of public control will reduce administrative burden upon business, increase the quality of control-and-supervision functions and decrease damage to competition caused by violations of the law.

The main form of preventative work is public discussions of enforcement practice.

On 18 October 2017, Deputy Head of FAS Sergey Puzyrevskiy and Head of Crimea OFAS Timophey Kuraev held public discussions with representatives of business and expert communities.

Sergey Puzyrevskiy pointed out that FAS focuses on the violations that are important for protecting and developing competition in general, the rights of businessmen and consumers at large.

Talking about the results of the first six months of 2017, Deputy Head of FAS said: “In this period we issued 2166 warnings and opened 1728 antimonopoly cases. Most warnings (1456) concerned elements of violating the antimonopoly norms by the authorities, 358 – unfair competition, and 352 – abusing dominance”.

“Regarding categories of antimonopoly cases, bid-rigging became the “ranking leader” (570)”, continued Sergey Puzyrevskiy. “Abusing dominance is on the second place (430). 354 cases were initiated upon the facts of committing violations by the authorities, 193 - for anticompetitive agreements and concerted actions and 181 – upon facts of unfair competition”.

Deputy Head of FAS reminded to businessmen and the expert community that after adopting the “forth antimonopoly package” FAS Presidium had obtained the right to give explanations on applying the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”.

Head of Crimea OFAS Timophey Kuraev continued public discussion of enforcement practice. He reported that the regional antimonopoly body pays special attention to the markets of port and telecommunications services, operations of retail chains and refueling stations due to their social significance and high risk of damaging competition.

Timophey Kuraev also stated that in 8 months of 2017 the Department for Advertising and Control over the Authorities of Crimea OFAS had issued 17 warnings to the authorities to stop actions with elements of violating the antimonopoly law.

Head of Crimea OFAS gave a detailed account of procurement aspects. “During the period in question Crimea OFAS considered 1753 complaints on breaching the procurement law, particularly 125 complaints about observing the law of the Russian Federation on procurement of goods, works, services by particular types of legal entities, of which 60 complaints were pronounced justified. 49 warnings were issued”, continued Timophey Kuraev. “Under the law on contractual system, the antimonopoly body investigated 1628 complaints, of which 556 were found justified”.

Summing up, Timophey Kuraev characterized the most frequent violations of the contractual system and the law on procurement.

Following the public discussion, Sergey Puzyrevskiy and Timophey Kuraev gave a press-conference.