OREANDA-NEWS. December 13, 2013. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) organized a 3-day international workshop on “Investigating Cartels. International Cooperation”, which took place in FAS Resource-and-Training Centre in Kazan. The workshop was opened by Deputy Head of FAS Alexander Kinev.

In his welcoming address, Alexander Kinev strongly emphasized the importance of result-oriented cooperation between the antimonopoly authorities across the globe to efficiently investigate international cartels. “We have achieved certain results in cooperation with our closest neighbours but we are concerned with issues of cooperation with the far abroad in cartel investigations. Such interaction is hampered by absence of relevant international documents Therefore, FAS is putting forward an initiative for introduce a new form of international cooperation of the antimonopoly authorities – to establish a so called “Global Antitrust” by analogy with INTERPOL”, stated Alexander Kinev.

Although anti-cartel efforts are a relatively new area of FAS work, Russian antimonopoly authority has already achieved considerable success in this field due to implementing the best international practices.

“Today Russia has built a strong legislative and institutional framework for efficient competition policy”, pointed out Alexander Kinev. “Nevertheless, we must continue liberalization of antimonopoly regulation and increase enforcement efficiency in line with the Road Map for “Developing Competition and Improving the Antimonopoly Policy” and the Strategy for Developing Competition and Antimonopoly Regulation for the period until 2024.

For instance, Deputy Head of FAS stressed the importance of decriminalizing abuse of market dominance.

“We propose to abolish criminal liability for abusing dominance and remove this Article from the Criminal Code”, said Alexander Kinev.

Among other FAS anti-cartel priorities Alexander Kinev mentioned synchronizing administrative and criminal leniency programmes and setting higher thresholds of income and damages, reaching which would constitute4 the grounds for holding criminally liable for economic violations.

“We try to focus attention on the biggest violations that cause significant damages to the national economy”, emphasized Alexander Kinev.

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The international workshop on “Investigating Cartels. International Cooperation”, took place in FAS Resource-and-Training Centre on 4 - 6 December 2013. Representatives of competition authorities from Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Korea, the Czech Republic, and Ecuador, as well as officers of the antimonopoly authorities of the countries of the Customs Union: Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.