Sayat Zholshy & Partners Team Successfully Resolves Complex Antitrust Suit

The SZP Dispute Resolution and Antitrust Law teams have successfully resolved an administrative lawsuit over an Antitrust Authority’s order to launch an antitrust investigation into monopolistic price-fixing allegations.

Some time ago, Kazakhstan Antitrust Authority launched the antitrust investigation against our Client for alleged antitrust offence implied by Article 174(1) (Monopolistic Price-fixing) of the Kazakhstan Entrepreneur Code.

The Client disagreed with the Antitrust Authority’s order to launch the investigation and decided to challenge it in a judicial procedure.

In the run-up to the proceedings, SZP lawyers demanded a host of documents from the Antitrust Authority, as well as other competent authorities and certain market undertakings, based on which it became clear that the Antitrust Authority issued their investigation order in material breach of the Kazakhstan laws regulating the procedure and methodology for assessing competition in the relevant commodity market.

Having reviewed the documents submitted by SZP attorneys, the Court concluded that the assessment of competition in the relevant commodity market conducted by the Antitrust Authority resulted in unfounded monopolistic price-fixing allegations and further unlawful order to launch the antitrust investigation into such allegations against our Client.

It is particularly remarkable that the lawsuit was finally resolved by the Court of First Instance due to the acceptance of the first-instance judgment by the central Kazakhstan Antitrust Authority and the prevention of the local Antitrust Authority from filing an appeal against the judgment.

Furthermore, seeing the Client’s winning position (ensured by SZP attorneys) in the Court, the central Antitrust Authority themselves – without a special ruling of the Court  – brought the antitrust investigation to a halt without waiting for the final judgment.

This is the first incident in SZP practice considering that, in the vast majority of cases, government authorities exercise their right to appeal against first-instance judgments.

This case has become an exception, and the judgment of the Court of First Instance has become final and binding.  The Antitrust Authority’s order to launch the antitrust investigation has been revoked.