OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2014. International cartels cause the most harm to the economy. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) first started investigating such types of cartels in 2013. Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of FAS, Andrey Tsarikovskiy, made this statement at “How to make combating cartels efficient” session, at the IV International Legal Forum in St Petersburg.

The key speaker, Deputy Head of FAS, Alexander Kinev, pointed out that one of the aspects of increasing efficiency of anti-cartel efforts is strengthening international cooperation. FAS already has experience of cooperating with antimonopoly authorities and governments of other countries in investigating several cases. For instance, as a result of cooperating with Vietnamese government bodies, Vietnam Administrative Committee for swai export to Russian market was liquidated as one of suspected members of cartel for dividing the market of Vietnamese fish. Deputy Head of FAS also discussed cooperation with the Government of Norway on a case about a cartel on the market of salmon supplies to Russia and a cartel on the market of international ocean container shipping, investigating which FAS interacts with the antimonopoly authorities of the USA and the European Union.

Alexander Kinev said that one of the problems is lack of regulation of the issues of cross-border cooperation in investigating and holding cartel participants liable at the international level. He pointed out that it is necessary to regulate joint inspections, with foreign competition authorities, of economic entities located in foreign countries, exchanging confidential information, developing common information databases, the procedure of imposing fines upon foreign legal entities, and other questions.

As a possible solution to the problem, Deputy Head of Russian antimonopoly authority proposed to devise and adopt an International Anti-Cartel Convention, as well as form an International Anti-Cartel Organization that guarantees mutual assistance between competition authorities in investigations.

Alexander Kinev also emphasized the importance of making changes to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations to extrapolate possibility of holding foreign legal entities and their officials administratively liable for the violations committee outside the Russian Federation that nevertheless affect competition in Russia.