OREANDA-NEWS. June 16, 2014. An Assistant to the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Vladimir Kachalin, and Deputy Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Mukhamed Khamukov, had a formal visit to Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority, FCCA, in Helsinki. The visit took place under the framework of 2013-1014 Cooperation Programme between FAS and FCCA.

Finland was represented by Director of Competition Division of FCCA Timo Mattila, his Assistants Rainer Lindberg and Mika Hermas, and FCCA research officer, Teemu Karttunen.

The focus of the 2-day event was on exchanging experience between competition authorities in cartel investigations, obtaining evidence and assessing and compensating damages caused by cartels.

On the first day of the visit, Deputy Head of FAS Anti-Cartel Department, Mukhamed Khamukov, described to the Finnish colleagues Russian practice of investigations and shared the best examples of the investigated cases.

An Assistant to the Head of FAS Russia, Vladimir Kachalin, informed the meeting participants about determining the priorities in investigating cartel cases and FAS experience on the issue.

FCCA officers discussed cartel investigations carried out in Finland, the leniency programme and the competition advocacy measures undertaken by FCCA.

In the concluding part of the meeting, FCCA representatives also paid attention to the quality of direct evidence that FAS obtains in the course of unscheduled inspections (the so-called “dawn raids”) in investigating anticompetitive agreements.

“As in many other countries, combating cartels is one of priorities of FAS Russia and FCCA. Exchanging experience between competition authorities of different countries undoubtedly facilitate improvement of the existing practices and elaborating general approaches to combat one of the most dangerous economic violations (crimes) – cartels”, pointed out Mukhamed Khamukov.