OREANDA-NEWS. January 27, 2010. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) has devised amendments to liberalize the antimonopoly law and sent them for approval to the Russian Ministry of Economic Development. In March these amendments must be presented to the Government of Russia, said Igor Artemyev, the Head of FAS Russia, at the conference "Russia and the World: Challenges of the New Decade" in the Academy of National Economy, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

"Tentatively these amendments can be called the "third antimonopoly package", although earlier when we said the "third antimonopoly package" we meant amendments to the law on natural monopolies", stated Igor Artemyev.

"The underlying idea of the current amendments - liberalization of the tightest norms and standards of the antimonopoly law. In some instances the screws were indeed over-tightened, and we are prepared to loosen them if it doesn't not affect the state of competition", says the Head of FAS Russia.

According to the Head of the antimonopoly authority, it is planned to introduce amendments under which cartel collusions cannot be found within the same group of persons, and, consequently, such actions cannot bear criminal liability.

Criminal liability will not be applicable to those types of abuse of market dominance by the companies that do not directly restrict competition but are related, for instance, to infringing the rights of counteragents, including failure to conclude a contract. "Probably such violations will be punishable by a fixed, rather than turnover fine between 1-5 million Rubles", thinks Igor Artemyev.

FAS Russia also proposes to substantiate and simplify the definition of a group of persons. Changes will be made to the Article about extraterritoriality of the provisions of the Russian antimonopoly law.

"We will give exhaustive definition of coordination of economic activity and concerted actions. If a company deliberately did not publicly inform in advance and did not publish a price forecast for its products, then if this and another company simultaneously increase prices for their products, we cannot talk about parallel price rise", said Igor Artemyev. Parallel actions towards increasing prices are not enough. It also necessary to take into account other signs of coordination of economic activity, for instance, witness statements or deliberateness or careful planning of the companies' actions.

Igor Artemyev also believes that when defining monopolistically high price it is possible to take into account the level of reduction in solvent consumer demand. However, this idea required careful consideration.