Problem

There are several groups of factors, the elimination of which will contribute to a significant reduction of corruption risks in the operations of the state authority tasked with protecting competition, and will make it possible to increase the effectiveness of the economic competition protection system in Ukraine as a whole:
insufficient information on the activities of the Antimonopoly Committee. This concerns the unregulated issue of unimpeded public access to discussions of decisions, draft normative legal acts, plans and results of the Antimonopoly Committee’s activities; the obligation of the Antimonopoly Committee to publish its recommendations, publish the list of cases it is examining, and inform the public about the gist of the case, the stages and progress of its examination is not defined;
the Antimonopoly Committee is vested with a number of unjustified discretionary powers. These include, in particular, the discretion to determine the timeframe for examination of cases involving violations of economic competition protection laws and to extend this timeframe; the lack of a transparent mechanism for determining and replacing state commissioners responsible for examining cases involving violations of economic competition protection laws, which would take into account their professional qualities and experience, and promote impartiality, independence, legality and validity of their decisions; discretion in determining the amount of fines imposed for violations of economic competition protection laws;
the leniency program for cartel members is not effective enough. In the EU and the US, the leniency program is one of the most effective ways to detect and combat cartels. Due to flawed legislative regulation, this program is effectively nonexistent in Ukraine.
The Law of Ukraine On the Protection of Economic Competition contains general provisions on the leniency program, but does not elaborate the mechanisms for implementing this program. The Law also fails to define leniency mechanisms for other members of the cartel in exchange for their cooperation with the investigation. The inability to effectively use the leniency program complicates the process of detecting and putting a stop to illegal activities of cartel members.