The American Bar Association (ABA) and the International Bar Association (IBA) are organizing the 16th biennial workshop on the investigation of major international cartels (International Cartel Workshop) in Vienna from June 10 to 12. The workshops are now in their 29th year and are hosted by a different city every two years, with previous hosts including Tokyo, London, Vancouver, Paris, New York and Rome. The Vienna workshop is also expected to bring together around 250 leading competition law experts, cartel investigators, representatives of regulators and competition protection agencies, as well as numerous prominent lawyers and attorneys active in the field of competition law, which will also be attended by Andrej Matvoz, Director of Slovenian Competition Protection Agency (SCPA).
The workshop in Vienna will be one of the most eminent international meetings in the field of competition law, where participants will devote most of their time and discussion to the examination of cartels. A special feature of the event will also be the "Instruction by demonstration" method, where participants will follow the entire course of a case through a simulation of a real global cartel investigation - from the first report of a suspected cartel to the conclusion of proceedings in various jurisdictions. The head of SCPA, Andrej Matvoz, notes that in recent years - unlike Slovenia - the number and use of whistleblower programs, such as the investigation of digital markets and algorithmic price coordination, has been increasing worldwide. Matvoz highlights the key topics that will be addressed at this year's workshop: "In Vienna, we will talk about the latest global trends in the prosecution of cartels, as well as house searches carried out in connection with the prosecution of cartel agreements. We will touch on the role of whistleblowers and applicants, as well as the leniency program, as well as the increasingly important cross-border cooperation of regulators, and how cartel law is developing in the USA, Latin America, Asia and, last but not least, here in the EU. There is increasing talk, and this will also be the case in Vienna, about the personal liability of senior employees for cartel violations. Personally, I intend to highlight the issue of cartel agreements in public procurement, digital data acquisition and hiding due to new encrypted systems - these are security systems that convert data into an unreadable form using mathematical algorithms and keys. I will also speak about the importance of regulators being independent from both politics and capital.”
More information about the Vienna event is available at: https://events.americanbar.org/event/24941918-471c-4537-85e8-99ebdf0efb06/summary