THE EXCHANGE OF EXPERIENCE IN THE FIELD OF ANTIMONOPOLY REGULATION TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THE AZRC AND THE FAS OF RUSSIA

The Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition (hereinafter — the Agency) hosted a two-day seminar on the topic "The practice of detecting and suppressing the activities of cartels", organized by the Agency jointly with the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (hereinafter — the FAS).

The seminar was attended by heads and employees of the Investigation Department, territorial divisions of the Agency, as well as heads of the Anti-Cartel Department and the Financial Control Department of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The work of the seminar was moderated by the director of the "Center for Protection of Competition" Aldash Aitzhanov.

During the meeting, Deputy Chairman of the Agency Yerlan Alzhan noted the importance of interaction between the antimonopoly authorities of neighboring countries, including the exchange of experience in the field of digital transformation.

The participants of the meeting exchanged views on the identification and suppression of cartel activities in the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, discussed a number of issues regarding the use of digital tools in proving collusion, the use of information systems, the practice of identifying cartel agreements and conducting dawn raids, as well as criminal liability for concluding cartel agreements.

As a result of the seminar, it is planned to consider the introduction of new methods for identifying and proving cartel agreements, as well as the practice of using digital tools in proving collusion.

Last year, the APDC revealed 46 facts of coordinated actions and the organization of cartel conspiracies. The court recovered more than 670 million tenge.

Price collusion is most often found - an agreement aimed at setting or maintaining prices, discounts, surcharges or margins.  There is also another kind of cartels - collusion at auction. As a rule, they manifest themselves in the fact that bidders agree in advance on a certain behavior in order to artificially create a particular bidding result.