The Sixteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal kept the trial court's judgment in force, which passed in a result of claims of two energy companies to invalidate decision and determination of FAS in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic in violation of Clause 1, Clause 3 Part 1 Article 11 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” .
The fight against cartels is one of priorities of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia. The necessity of stiffening of antimonopoly policy is the main discussion, especially towards such crimes, in a last few years. As has been noted, the most dangerous violations of antitrust laws are anticompetitive agreements involving authorities. In particular, the so-called "fish case” has received the extensive discussion of the legal community.
As a result, It breathed new life into “sleeping” article of the Criminal Code about combatting cartels.
And this year, in practice, has become a landmark. As many lawyers notice, one of the most important event of antitrust practice, as the field of work, was the first conviction for the creation of a cartel, which went into effect on the 3th of September.
However, against the background of declared war on anticompetitive agreements, sometimes the decisions of the territorial bodies of the FAS are carried to the point of absurdity. Information about some of them was given by co-chair of the National Union for the Protection of Consumer Rights Alexei Ulyanov on the Forbes website in October of this year (http://www.forbes.ru/mneniya-column/konkurentsiya/270499-popkorn-sakhar-i-taksi-kak-fas-boretsya-s-malym-biznesom).
According to Kairov Soslan, Partner National law company "Mitra", who represented one of the energy company in mentioned case, "the cartel case from KCR, despite the specificity of the energy industry in general and "overregulation" the electric power industry in whole, relies just to that category of cases, which were published in Forbes. It goes to show the following: the goods market determination as a wholesale electricity market in the geographic boundaries of the KCHR, in the connection of the fact, that no one of the parties was not an end-user of power. Excellent, that the courts sorted out the situation and passed just and founded legal acts. ".
Low standard of proof showed by Service has led to founded cancellation of the Decision in the court. The goods market defined incorrect, the competitive environment was non been analyzed, the market share of each player was not determined, no evidence or accusation or danger either in violation of lawful rights and interests of a market participants, rules, governing the functioning of both the wholesale market and retail electricity markets, was not administer, the pricing was not been investigated either on wholesale market or retail market, - there are the main reasons for cancellation of Decision – noticed Kairov.
