On 8 December 2015 at the office of mobile operator MTS, a presentation was held dedicated to the system of antimonopoly compliance. This system was devised specially for MTS by Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers and their colleagues from the company, in conjunction with audit firm Ernst & Young.

The major project to develop the antimonopoly compliance system was ongoing for over a year. MTS has become the first company on the Russian market to introduce an internal system to prevent such violations of the legislation. The purpose of the antimonopoly compliance system is to reduce antimonopoly risks. The system makes a company’s business activity more transparent and ultimately reduces the burden on the antimonopoly authority.

The presentation was attended by the FAS’s deputy head Sergey Puzyrevskiy, head of the FAS’s legal department Artem Molchanov, members of the MTS board, Pepeliaev Group’s managing partner Sergey Pepeliaev, the head of Pepeliaev Group’s antimonopoly regulation group Elena Sokolovskaya, the head of Pepeliaev Group’s commercial practice Oxana Migitko, and representatives from Ernst & Young.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) shares MTS’s position that introducing corporate compliance systems is important. The FAS’s representatives have more than once asserted that the state should encourage the creation of internal systems to prevent violations of antimonopoly legislation. In the future, such systems may be regarded as extenuating circumstances when amounts of liability are calculated and substantially affect the amount of antimonopoly fines. Besides, such systems may be regarded as circumstances testifying to the fact that the company has not committed an antimonopoly offence, which serves as grounds for the company to be released from the liability.

During the presentation Sergey Puzyrevskiy noted that the system developed for MTS may be used as a basis for the federal standard of antimonopoly compliance when such standard, along with issues relating to certification of this instrument, is discussed.