THE MEETING OF THE ICN CARTEL WORKING GROUP WAS HELD IN FEBRUARY, 2021

The Deputy Head of the Anti-Cartel Department, Anton Teslenko, acted as a key speaker at the closed workshop for the members of the International Competition Network (ICN) Cartel Working Group which has been co-chaired by the FAS Russia since 2019 

The seminar was devoted to the issues of practical problems of identifying and investigating cartels and other anti-competitive agreements during the period of COVID-19. The representatives of the competition authorities of the USA, Sweden, Spain, Canada and Brazil took part in the event.

The participants of the seminar discussed the particularities of cartel investigations, notably, down raids, as well as hearings and interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking into account the imposed restrictive measures. 

The speaker noted that in order to reduce the administrative burden on the representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises in spring 2020 the Government of the Russian Federation adopted a ruling under which serious restrictions for conducting unscheduled field inspections were undertaken. 

“The inspections based on the anti-competitive agreements could be carried out on the basis of the instructions outgoing from the President of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation, or at the request of the prosecutor based on the materials and appeals received by the procuratorial authorities,” – mentioned Anton Teslenko.

Continuing the speech the spokesperson noted that given the limited time resources and the high social significance of the prompt response to the current situation the Operational Headquarters was created to control the situation in food markets, drug and medical goods markets mainly aimed at preventing anticompetitive collusion in social spheres. 

To sum it up Anton Teslenko added that in the context of the pandemic, the work of the FAS Russia was mostly reoriented to conduct constant price monitoring and preventive control, carried out, inter alia, in conjunction with law enforcement authorities.

 “Such tool as warnings against officials who through their public statements could entail illegal concerted actions of economic entities was used often. After receiving the warnings, the potential violations have never been implemented. In addition, the FAS Russia regularly held the meetings with the representatives of specialized associations and various business communities and actively supported the initiatives of major market participants aimed at stabilizing the situation,” - the speaker concluded.