FAS will "advertise" Friedman in court

FAS continues litigation with the structures of Mikhail Fridman. What else does the antimonopoly authority do, what are the results, and why can't fines alone stop violators?

As the correspondent of The Moscow Post reports, the protracted conflict between the FAS and Alfa Bank is gaining momentum. In mid-June, the department fined the organization for a commercial that announced the gift of "20 shares of the largest companies to each client." The promise sounded, of course, tempting, but it turned out with a condition that was not obvious to customers: open an account and spend at least 1,000 rubles on the exchange. Antitrust officials concluded that this information misleads consumers and imposed penalties on the bank.

However, something else caused a greater resonance - for the second time in a short period, the FAS went to court with a demand to oblige the bank to place counter-advertising, that is, to publish an official refutation of inaccurate information. The Moscow Arbitration Court accepted the lawsuit for preliminary hearings scheduled for July 8.

For the first time, the FAS obliged Alfa-Bank to publicly recognize inaccurate information in advertising only in 2024 - after the action on the deposit "15% is the best rate in the country," which was launched on all advertising channels of the bank. But the FAS forced the bank to admit that it was wrong. If the court in July again takes the side of the FAS, this will be the second such case in just a year - an absolute record for Russia in the fight against unfair advertising in the banking sector.

Meanwhile, Alfa Bank is actually the market champion in terms of the number of cases related to inaccurate advertising. In 2024 alone, the antimonopoly service opened over 20 cases of violation of the Advertising Law against the bank. Moreover, this record dynamics is easy to explain: fines for violation of the Advertising Law on average lie in the range of 100-500 thousand. rubles - the amount that any large bank perceives as perhaps a small expense on PR, and not as a harsh punishment.

So the existing system is clearly ineffective. There is a bias: the law does not keep up with reality, and large banks are not at all afraid to be caught by the hand. Another thing is the bank's obligations to refute inaccurate information, which can really be a reputational blow to the bank in the eyes of its consumers and partners.

The main thing is cartels

But "ad wars" are just the tip of the iceberg. Under the attention of the FAS are market structures, oligarchic holdings, corporations living off government contracts. In 2024, the service opened about 315 cases under anti-competitive agreements, revealing collusion in the amount of about 122 billion rubles in public procurement alone. Abuses in this area are also well known - the participants agree to act in concert at the auction, bring fictitious offices to them, share billions of government contracts - and often in collusion with local officials. The FAS has been fighting this for a long time and quite systematically.

One of the striking examples of recent months was the "garbage" case in the Ryazan region - the FAS revealed a cartel for 7.8 billion rubles between firms involved in the transportation of MSW. In Siberia, enterprising businessmen also did not escape the attention of the antimonopoly authority: four companies "divided" the auction by 263.7 million rubles, having agreed on the cost of repairing highways in the Rostov, Volgograd regions and Adygea. Such cases are not one-time failures, but a real system, when entire sectors of the economy in the regions begin to control cartels, often in collusion with officials of local administrations.

Recently, the FAS has even tightened its approach to procurement control. In 2024, almost 39 thousand were considered. complaints of participants, more than 11 thousand regulations and included in the Register of unscrupulous suppliers over 15 thousand companies.

According to information for February 2025, the total amount of all antimonopoly fines collected by the FAS for 2024 amounted to 9.9 billion rubles, which is almost twice as much as in 2023 (5.8 billion rubles). Most penalties were imposed on violators of the Law on the Protection of Competition in Industry (4.1 billion rubles. Violators in the field of communications and information technology paid 1.3 billion rubles in fines, fines for cartel conspiracies and closed purchases amounted to 1.1 billion rubles.

FAS oligarchs are not afraid

You can recall other well-known cases of antitrust cases that were considered in 2024-2025. In the field of supply of medical equipment, a case was initiated against the companies "Focus," "Otrimed" and "Extravign" - they were suspected of conspiracy in the procurement of medical instruments for 1.2 billion rubles. A separate block of issues is related to tariffs, including in the field of communications. In 2024, the FAS repeatedly initiated cases against mobile operators - MTS, MegaFon and Beeline. They were suspected of charging unreasonable tariffs when roaming in Crimea.

In the field of marketplaces, the FAS recognized two well-known companies as collectively dominant with a share of about 80%, which became the basis for full-scale control over their actions and restrictions on tariffs and working conditions with partners. The list of cases can be continued, and the result for the country is billions and billions of rubles returned to the budget, protection of competition in significant industries, which in itself contributes to the development of markets and economic recovery.

Of course, only administrative fines do not always become the consequences of FAS actions for violators. In 2024, 42 criminal cases were initiated on the basis of antitrust proceedings, including 15 related to cartels. These are no longer formal claims against accountants and advertisers, but real blows to the organizers of "schematoses," often fattening on a government order. At the same time, fines in this area are higher: some of the unscrupulous market participants caught by the hand received such in the amount of over 1 billion rubles. For example, NTK and Kubanyoil for collusion in the oil market. Well, the well-known publishing house (monopolist in the school textbook market) was obliged to return more than 2 billion rubles to the budget.

These examples show that antitrust enforcers are not afraid to confront monopolies and cartels, even when it comes to large federal players. But so far the bureaucratic mechanism is slow, and the fines remain relatively low. If the legislative branch strengthened the powers of the FAS - for example, tightened penalties and allowed to quickly block the same inaccurate advertising, the effectiveness of the department would increase significantly, experts are convinced.