MOSCOW, September 24 - RAPSI. Supreme Commercial Court Chairman Anton Ivanov has proposed adopting a procedure for prejudicial appeal in antitrust cases. Meanwhile, the federal antimonopoly watchdog has lauded the initiative, but complained of a a lack of human resources.

During his speech at the Russian-U.S. conference on antitrust legislation in Russia and the United States, Ivanov said the service wins over one-half of the cases filed with the Supreme Commercial Court.

"Interestingly, regional resolutions are much more frequently reversed than the watchdog's decisions, which means that an appeals procedure could be adopted by the watchdog," Ivanov said.

He said a similar out-of-court auditing process is practiced by the Federal Tax Service.

Its adoption has reduced the number of tax cases to be handled by courts by 40-45 percent. This would also help to create a single antitrust case database, he said.

The watchdog's head Igor Artemyev agreed that the matter deserves attention, but said his service lacks human resources. While the tax service has 200,000 employees, he said, his organization only has 3,000."However, we will think it over," he said.