Criminal Responsibility for Collusions at Auctions

Abstract

The anti-monopoly practice concerning agreements prohibited by the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” traditionally defines the so-called collusions at tenders. Depriving the state of the opportunity to save budget funds, collusions at auctions do not only violate the procedure established by the law, but, by limiting competition, adversely affects the country’s economy.For collusion at an auction, both administrative (Article 14.32 “Conclusion of an agreement restricting competition, the implementation of concerted actions restricting competition, coordination of economic activities” of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation) and criminal responsibility (Article 178 “Restriction of competition”, as well as Articles 159, 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) is set.However, the current version of Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which is supposed to be the main one in the fight against anti-competitive agreements, has significant drawbacks that make the fight against these dangerous anti-competitive agreements ineffective. The damage from the activities of all cartels (in the commodity markets, during the procurements by state-owned companies and the state, during the bidding for the alienation of state property) is estimated at 1.5-2% of GDP.Meanwhile, when carrying out public procurement and procurement of companies with state participation consume up to 30 trillion rubles a year. If the bidding is held under collusion, the reduction in the initial (maximum) contract price hardly reaches 1%; if the bidding is held in a competitive environment, the price decline reaches 20-30%. Perhaps not so obvious, but this does not mean that the collusion at auctions has a negative effect on competition. Companies compete neither in price nor in quality. Access to the state order, and therefore, an undoubted competitive advantage in the commodity markets, is obtained not by those companies that are better and more efficient, but by those that have been able to come to an agreement. Only in 2016, due to the low level of competition in trading, the budgets of all levels lost more than 180 billion rubles. Moreover, the Federal AntiMonopoly Service (FAS) considers this number underestimated — the application of the methodology adopted in OECD countries brings the figure of damage up to 1 trillion rubles per year.The current situation requires an appropriate response, in particular, introducing changes into the legislation of the Russian Federation that reflect the substantially increased public danger of anti-competitive agreements and will also contribute to the development of the practice of countering them.