APDC TO STRENGTHEN ANTITRUST REGULATION

The Agency for Protection and Development of Competition is preparing a comprehensive set of amendments to antitrust legislation, including an extension of investigation periods, the introduction of turnover-based fines, reform of the Leniency Programme, and a reduction in the use of notices for serious violations. Chairman of the Agency Marat Omarov outlined the key areas of the reform at the 16th Kazakhstan Legal Forum (Kazakhstan Legal Forum 2026) in Almaty.

The Second OECD Peer Review of Kazakhstan’s Competition Law and Policy served as the basis for further improvement of competition policy. Following the review, international experts issued 67 recommendations. The Agency supported 23 key recommendations and prepared a package of legislative and institutional amendments.

“Experts concluded that Kazakhstan’s current antitrust regime has developed a certain imbalance towards ‘soft law’, which weakens the deterrent effect of sanctions. In recent years, the Agency has actively developed preventive mechanisms, including notices, warnings and compliance measures. We believed that direct dialogue with businesses would make it possible to restore compliance more quickly without lengthy court proceedings. However, the OECD Review demonstrated the downside of such an approach. The deterrent effect has diminished. Today, a company understands that its first violation will not necessarily result in severe financial penalties, but may instead give it an opportunity to voluntarily and painlessly close the case,” Marat Omarov explained.

Therefore, one of the areas of the ongoing reforms will be the improvement of antitrust investigations. The draft legislation provides for an extension of the basic investigation period from three to nine months, with the possibility of a further three-month extension. This will expand the opportunities for gathering evidence and conducting economic analysis.

Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses have also been prepared, providing for a transition to turnover-based fines amounting to 0.5% of the offender’s annual revenue. Another change concerns the Leniency Programme. It is proposed to abolish the requirement that the Agency must have no prior information about a cartel before an application is submitted, as well as the requirement for full compensation of all damage in advance. The first participant to voluntarily disclose a cartel and admit the violation would be eligible for full immunity from liability.

The Agency also proposes to narrow the list of violations for which notices are issued and to extend the period for determining repeated violations from one year to two years. A repeated violation during this period would constitute grounds for initiating an investigation. The use of notices would be excluded in highly concentrated markets.

A significant portion of the amendments is incorporated into the Sixth Antitrust Package. The Government’s version of the draft law contains six blocks: investigations; compliance and antitrust audits; economic concentration; commodity market analysis; denationalization; and class actions. Following the constitutional reform, the draft law was submitted to the Kurultai for consideration, where a new working group has been established.

“The logic of the Sixth Package is to shift the focus from ex post punishment to prevention, predictability in law enforcement and, most importantly for consumers, actual compensation for harm caused. We seek to establish transparent rules of the game under which violating the law simply becomes unprofitable,” the Head of the Agency emphasized.

As part of improving investigations, it is proposed to adopt a separate methodology for conducting them, setting out the elements of violations, sources of information and types of evidence. At the same time, an annual review of enforcement practice is envisaged to establish consistent approaches to the application of competition legislation.

To strengthen preventive mechanisms, the introduction of antitrust audits is proposed. Businesses would be able to engage external experts to independently identify indications of violations, remedy them and notify the Agency without the risk of being held liable. For companies that have already committed a violation, mandatory antitrust compliance would be introduced.

The sixth block of the draft law provides for the introduction of class actions in the field of competition protection. The basis for such an action would be a decision of the Agency or a court judgment that has entered into legal force in an antitrust case. Financial services and the securities market would be excluded from the scope of the mechanism. Court costs would be borne by the initiator of the action, while compensation to affected parties would be paid by the defendant based on supporting documents.

At the same time, the Agency is developing approaches to regulating new digital markets. The proposals include special criteria for determining a dom