Pepeliaev Group and Legal Insight magazine together held an ‘aperitif’ devoted to: “Antimonopoly Compliance: an innovative system for managing antimonopoly risks and reducing the extent of liability.” The event took place on 20 June in the context of the St Petersburg International Legal Forum.

Notable among the key trends in antimonopoly regulation is the increased interest of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) in corporate antimonopoly compliance systems being set up. The top brass in the authority have declared on a number of occasions that the state should encourage the creation of internal systems to prevent violations of antimonopoly law. In the future, if such systems are in place, this could be regarded as a mitigating factor when an amount of liability is determined and could have a substantial impact on the amount of antimonopoly fines. The practice of implementing similar systems has become widespread in Canada, Australia, France and Japan, but for the time being it is not especially well known in Russia.

During the ‘aperitif’, the head of the FAS’s legal division Sergey Puzyrevsky clarified the authority’s position on this matter, while those taking part discussed whether an antimonopoly compliance system could be created in practice, what the risks would be in implementing it, how much it would cost to develop, and also what practical steps have already been taken in this direction.

Pepeliaev Group’s lawyers are actively working on creating antimonopoly compliance systems and implementing these legal tools within companies the firm acts for. Sharing their hands-on experience of establishing internal systems to prevent violations of antimonopoly law were Sergey Pepeliaev, managing partner of Pepeliaev Group, along with senior partner Vladimir Sokov, head of antimonopoly regulation Elena Sokolovskaya, and head of commercial Oxana Migitko.

Taking part in the event were heads of the legal departments at and members of the senior management of prominent Russian and foreign companies, among them Rosneft, Siemens, MTS, Norilsk Nickel, Rolf, Citibank and many others.