OREANDA-NEWS. January 31, 2012. With “the third antimonopoly package of laws” coming into force on 6th January 2012, a definition of cartels is for the first time included in Russian antimonopoly law, said the Head of the Cartel Department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Alexander Kinev, to participants of the II Competition Forum of Ukraine, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

“Currently the law enforcement bodies in Russia has already opened seven criminal cases against participants of cartels at the federal level”, said Mr. Kinev.

He reminded that in 2009 Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was modernized and it now provides for up to seven years imprisonment for participating in cartels. Therefore, FAS set hopes on desire of cartel participants to take advantage of the leniency programme. Under the law, a company can be fully relieved from administrative liability if it is the first to report and present evidence to FAS about existence of a cartel. Other cartel participants face a ‘turnover” fine from 1% to 15%, as well as company managers criminal can be personally held criminally liable.

Anybody can report a cartel to the antimonopoly body through a special form on the official web-site of FAS Russia - www.fas.gov.ru or on a special site - www.anticartel.ru. Also, one can report a cartel by calling to a hot line on the phone specified on these sites.

State-Secretary Alexander Tsarikovskiy, Deputy Head of FAS Russia, and the Head of FAS Cartel Department, Alexander Kinev, are responsible for accepting petitions regarding unlawful agreements. If regional offices of FAS Russia receive such petitions they must hand them over to the Central Office of FAS for consideration.

Alexander Kinev told Forum participants that in 2010 FAS received 19 petitions about relieving liability from participating in a cartel, in 2011 – 20. Most of these statements were received by the Central FAS Office although there were some incidents of receiving such statements by regional offices of FAS Russia (for instance, Pskov, Tyumen, Bashkortostan, Vladimir, Rostov and Moscow OFAS Russia).

FAS Russia believes that one of the main problems preventing more active use of leniency programme for participating in a cartel is that the antimonopoly authority can make a decision only about relieving legal entities from criminal liability. The issue of relieving physical persons (officials) from criminal liability is under the jurisdiction of the law enforcement bodies and constitutes a very important mitigating circumstance.