AN ANTICORRUPTION FORUM OF THE ALL-RUSSIA PEOPLE’S FRONT FOCUSED ON CARTEL AND COLLUSIONS

Andrey Tenishev pointed out that the public controller of the All-Russia People’s Front is a great help to the Antimonopoly Service

The Anticorruption Forum of the “For Fair Procurement” Project of the All-Russia People’s Front in Krasnodar got together over a thousand participants. Activists and experts of the People’s Front discussed the exposed violations in public procurement and the plans for 2020 and interaction between socially active persons and representatives of the authorities and regulators. FAS was represented by Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department Andrey Tenishev.

The main theme of the Forum was countering cartels and bid-rigging collusions.

“In several years of collaboration between FAS Anti-Cartel Department and the All-Russia People’s Front, signs of violating the antimonopoly law were exposed in medicines and food products supply, construction and petrochemicals. Together, we organized over 20 events, including qualification advancement courses for activists, webinars, high-profile forums and round tables. The results of our work are opened cases, both administrative and criminal, and considerable fines”, said Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department Andrey Tenishev.

“Countering cartels is an important element of the work of activists of the People’s Front. The first sphere where we exposed numerous bid-rigging collusions was food supplies. So far the most part of antimonopoly cases - 52 have been opened in this sector. Then activists and experts of the All-Russia People’s Front analyzed other fields. Overall, we gave FAS information about procurement with elements of collusions for over 450 billion RUB. FAS opened 72 antimonopoly cases based on the materials forwarded by the Front. The total fines upon cartel members exceeded 408 million RUB”, pointed out Anton Getta, the coordinator of the “For Fair Procurement” Project of the All-Russia People’s Front, a member of the State Duma.

Andrey Tenishev asked the All-Russia People’s Front to help control tenders for alienating public property and the rights for it. FAS already exposed several bid-rigging incidents in this area. Here all authorities need assistance from social activists.

As an example, he mentioned the Krasnoyarsk territory where the regional government is trying to put the forestry sector to order. The Governor fired a former forestry minister who sold 1/7 forest resources of the region in 2013-2015 by-passing competitive procedures. Krasnoyarsk OFAS investigated an antimonopoly case and the law enforcement bodies went to Court with a criminal case against the former minister.

“Krasnoyarsk Government is actively engaging exchange trade mechanisms to sell timber – it is an absolutely efficient, market mechanism enabling to avoid various abuses. The Krasnoyarsk territory reached the first place in Russia on the volume of exchange trade with timber and we can only welcome it”, informed Andrey Tenishev.

Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department added that 14,000 public social activists – controllers of the All-Russia People’s Front who see suspicious tenders and auctions are a huge help for the Antimonopoly Service.

He informed that “controllers of the All-Russia People’s Front are qualified.  And we are in favour of working properly on complaints. FAS and your activists – we do not waste time, when organize trainings in Moscow and in Kazan, at FAS Centre for Education, webinars, and show how to work on signals correctly. It is also necessary that the themes we are working on are important for people. All of you work in the regions so let’s select socially important case to show that it is not collusion for the sake of collusion, and FAS and the All-Russia People’s Front do not simply nibble on commas, but care аbout improving the quality of people’s life. We compared the TOP-20 regions with the works quality of roads and the TOP-20 regions with the largest road cartels — 100% correlation”.

Anton Getta pointed out that it is necessary to exclude a possibility to procure socially importance objects in breach of competition.

He also said that “analysis of procurement at rural neighborhood medical-and-obstetrics centres — was a direct request from the President of Russia Vladimir Putin to the All-Russia People’s Front. Such centres are often the fist investments in rural areas that people have seen since the 1990s. It is important how the programme is being implemented not only in terms of health care sector but also in terms of the trust of the population in the May Order in general”.