OREANDA-NEWS. July 22, 2013. In Birobidzhan, Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR), the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) organized a workshop involving Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsarikovskiy, Governor Alexander Vinnikov, heads of regional FAS offices, representatives of law enforcement bodies and judicial community.

In the welcoming address to the workshop participants, Alexander Vinnikov presented infrastructure and investment projects in JAR.

In his turn, Andrey Tsarikovskiy discussed FAS experience on combating cartels.

Several years ago FAS formed a separate Anti-Cartel Department, which exposes cartels of special and precedent importance on the federal, interregional and international levels. Its functions also include cooperation with law enforcement bodies on collecting evidence in the course of cartel investigations. The Department has 21 officers.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy outlined the following near-term priorities:

Establishing positive judicial practice

Strengthening cooperation with law enforcement bodies, assisting them in completing several criminal investigations under Article 178 of the Criminal Code and submitting cases to Courts

Expanding cooperation with foreign competition authorities in investigating international cartels

Investigating international cartels, in particular, initiating several cases on violating the antimonopoly law against foreign legal entities.

Andrey Tsarikovskiy pointed out that on 18 June 2013 the State Duma unanimously accepted in the first reading draft Federal Law “On Introducing Amendments to Article 178 of the Criminal Code. The draft Law formalizes FAS responsibility to transfer to the law enforcement bodies materials on violations of the antimonopoly law that have signs of crimes. “It will enhance efficiency of cooperation between antimonopoly and law enforcement bodies”, thinks Deputy Head of FAS.

The draft Law also makes changes to the Law “On Operational and Investigative Activities”, which enables FAS to employ the results of operational and investigative activities. The draft Law gives criminal leniency guarantees to the persons that were the first to report the key information necessary to hold cartel participants liable.

Wrapping up his presentation, Andrey Tsarikovskiy gave examples of big cases on cartel investigations, such as “walleye pollack” cartel, the cartel on the market of wholesale supplies of salmon from Norway to Russia, a case on Vietnamese pangasius, etc.