FAS AND ROSFINMONITORING ARE IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF JOINT INVESTIGATIONS OF ECONOMIC CRIMES

In 2016–2018 FAS and Rosfinmonitoring [the Federal Financial Monitoring Service] conducted 117 investigations upon signs of cartels and other forms of collusion

On 13-16 May, FAS Centre for Education and Methodics in Kazan organizes a qualification advancement course for the staff of FAS regional offices on “Exposing and suppressing anticompetitive agreements. Interaction with the law enforcement bodies”.

The course was opened by Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy and Deputy Director of Rosfinmonitoring, Oleg Krylov.

The course comprises educational workshops on the pressing issues of exposing and suppressing anticompetitive agreements, including antimonopoly investigations in the big data epoch, economic analysis and analysis of the state of competition, exposing and proving anticompetitive agreements and interaction with the law enforcement bodies.

Qualification advancement courses on countering cartels are the results of an Agreement between the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Federal Financial Monitoring Service signed in 2011, under with the regulators carry our large-scale work on exposing and suppressing cartels and other anticompetitive agreements.

The inter-departmental collaboration is especially effective in the budgetary field, revealing procurement collusion, particularly, in public defence procurement and procurement by state-run companies.

For instance, in 2016–2018 FAS and Rosfinmonitoring carried out 117 joint investigations upon signs of cartels and other forms of collusion. 29 antimonopoly cases were opened, administrative fines were imposed upon cartel participants for over 1 billion RUB.

“Nothing disappears in the information environment, nowadays it is impossible to do anything without a trace there”, emphasized Andrey Tsarikovskiy. “Rosfinmonitoring had undertaken enormous analytical work and developed an advanced system for tracking financial actions. It is a great help for us in investigating cartels”.

Regarding the qualification advancement course, he added: “Together we investigate hundreds of cases and we need to sum up the results of yourselves, which we are doing at the event”.

“We consider cooperation with FAS a priority”, pointed out Oleg Krylov.  “Our systemic interaction started after amendments to No. 275-FZ Federal Law and establishing a system for its enforcement.  Pretty soon our contacts went beyond its sphere, especially reaching anti-cartel efforts and bid-rigging in the budgetary sector”.

“In our opinion, exposing bid-rigging cartels is one of the most efficient measures to counter unreasonable spending from the federal budget and exercise preventative measures to safe-keep budgetary funds”, concluded Deputy Director of Rosfinmonitoring.