The Agency for Protection and Development of Competition (APDC) has initiated an internal investigation into an official who violated procedures when ordering an inquiry against the IT company Documentolog LLP. However, the proceedings were temporarily suspended because the official went on a training course. The case was revived after Documentolog successfully challenged the agency's actions in court, which ruled the APDC's order unlawful, as reported by infohub.kz.
The story began in spring 2025, when the capital's APDC department issued an order to investigate Documentolog on suspicion of abusing its dominant position in the electronic document management systems market. The company disagreed with the antitrust authority's conclusions and turned to the court. The judicial panel for administrative cases of the Astana city court sided with the IT developer and fully annulled the APDC's order No. 14-OD of April 4, 2025.
In its ruling, the court stated that the unscheduled analysis of the competitive environment was initiated without a proper directive from the head of the antitrust body. The internal memorandum submitted by the agency lacked mandatory management requisites (resolution, date, and outgoing number), rendering it inadmissible evidence. "The absence of a proper directive means there were no legal grounds for conducting the unscheduled analysis, and therefore the analysis is unlawful. The notice to eliminate violations and the contested order to conduct the investigation are derivative administrative acts, whose legal force directly depends on the legality of the preceding analysis," the judicial panel concluded.
Since the analysis results had no legal force, the order to initiate the investigation was deemed unlawful, and the antitrust authority was obliged to reimburse the IT company's court costs. After winning in court, Documentolog representatives asked the APDC to hold accountable the officials who authorized the illegal inspection. In June 2026, an official response from the antitrust body revealed that the authorized agency had indeed initiated an internal investigation into the inspecting employee. However, the procedure is currently suspended because the official has been sent for training.