Conference “Antitrust Regulation in Russia”: key trends

The Conference “Antitrust Regulation in Russia” was held in Moscow on October 26 of 2012. It was organized by the Vedomosti newspaper. Reports by the Russian and foreign members covered the entire scope of antitrust practices: from governing documents to litigation.

As it is known, the Third Antitrust Package entered into force in 2012. It initiated the institution of warnings, outlined the criteria for extenuations and aggravations, introduced administrative fines for certain offences.

Senior officials of the Federal Antimonopoly Service told in their speeches of the latest initiatives of the institution. Among those are the following suggestions:

• To delimit the areas of competence of the Antimonopoly Service and the Rospotrebnadzor
• To widen the use of the institution of warnings and the extrajudicial appeal
• To follow the example of the Supreme Court of Arbitration in the sphere of information availability, in particular – to broadcast the sessions.

According to Igor Artemiev, Head of the FAS, the antitrust service in general “intends to improve the quality of the work by concentrating on the largest and most celebrated cases”.

Foreign experience, challenges faced by the antitrust authorities of Kazakhstan and Belorussia was described in the reports by the representatives of the respective organizations: Timur Baymukhanov, Deputy Chairman of the Competition Protection Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Igor Fomin, Director of the Price Policy Department of the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Belorussia. The collision with the production and importation of confectionery bearing the Soviet trademarks was specially examined.

Advocate Arthur Rokhlin, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", moderated the session on resolution of antitrust disputes by litigation.

Valeria Kiriushina, Judge of the Supreme Court of Arbitration, explained the theme of the session. She concentrated her speech around the litigation tendencies. Valeria Kiriushina listed all the important documents, which had influenced the practice, and specially mentioned the letter by the FAS dated 21.03.2012 regarding the responsibility for administrative offences and the explanations of the SCA of Russia on a certain case regarding the provisions of the Advertisement Law.

Prior to the beginning of the next report, Arthur Rokhlin outlined the key problem of the institution of warnings. According to him, “as no responsibility has been fixed for violating of those warnings, only consequences for the company image remain”.

Sergey Puzyrevsky, Head of Legal Department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, spoke in detail on the litigation practice in this regard. For example, an energy company appealed to the Court of Arbitration of the Astrakhan Region against a warning by the antitrust authority. The court ruled to terminate the case proceedings, because it believed that the FAS warnings should not be appealed against to courts. On another case, a court believed that the antitrust authority had issued the warning illegally, and revoked it.

Also, Sergey Puzyrevsky pointed out the importance of changes to the legislation, which delimited the terms of agreement and concerted actions.

Radmila Nikitina, Head of the Competition Group of the Firm, told the audience about the protection of consumers’ rights in the competition law. In her report, she spoke on the approaches to the delimitation of the areas of competence of the FAS and Rospotrebnadzor, which have been forming within the litigation practice. In this regard, her speech corresponded to that by Igor Artemiev, Head of the FAS.

Dmitry Rozhkov, Attorney of the Law Firm “Antimonopolnoe Biuro (Antitrust Bureau)”, told of the difficulties in proving the existence of cartels. He spoke on the problem of correlation of agreements and concerted actions and the problem of evaluation of evidence during the consideration of this kind of cases by antitrust authorities and courts of arbitration.

Arthur Rokhlin concluded the work of the session by thanking all participants and invited them to meet in one year, at the Fifth Antitrust Conference by the Vedomosti newspaper.