Due to legislation innovations, antitrust compliance is becoming one of the most vital topics among companies which need to introduce procedures preventing and minimizing risks of violating antitrust legislation.

The latest business breakfast of the antitrust practice held by Irina Akimova, Of Counsel and Head of Antitrust practice and Senior Associate Dmitry Gavrilenko was dedicated to this topic. The number of business breakfast participants is evidence of the business community’s great interest in this topic.

In their report, Irina and Dmitry touched upon a rather broad range of issues, including the following:

• The latest legislative innovations, including clauses from the draft law;
• Compulsory and supplementary compliance elements;
• Compliance models;
• Quantitative and qualitative risk assessment;
• Types of violations and penalties;
• Risk map, risk assessment methods, risk management etc.;

Our colleagues qualified employees’ unwillingness to be fully responsible for creation, maintenance and effectiveness of compliance procedures, as well as scattering of the full set of necessary information among company’s departments as the main mistakes and problems in the course of establishing compliance. At the same time, there are nuances connected with risk management tasks being in conflict with other business tasks and risks not involved in the general control system, as well as difficulties related to the noncompliance with regulations, notwithstanding the awareness of them and of the necessity to comply with them.

Since the practice related to elaborating and introducing antitrust compliance is being developed, the question about completeness and correctness of prepared documents arises for many companies. Clarity of a company’s further actions and effectiveness of antitrust compliance functioning depend on it. A partner of Capital Legal Services, branch office of the Training Center of the Russian Federal Antitrust Service (Moscow) carries out analysis and expert assessment of elaborated antitrust compliance programs. Thereby a company contacting the branch office of the Training Center can get an expert opinion as to the conformity of its program with the antitrust legislation, such opinion being very close to the official position of the Russian Federal Antitrust Service.