Turkcell is again in court docket subsequent week because it seeks to maintain a bribery and corrpution case, through which it’s in search of not less than R75-billion in damages from MTN Group, alive in South Africa’s authorized system.
The supreme court docket of enchantment in Bloemfontein will on Monday and Tuesday subsequent week hear from Turkcell about why it feels a decrease court docket – the excessive court docket in Gauteng – erred when it present in 2022 that South African courts didn’t have jurisdiction within the long-running matter.
On the time, MTN lauded the excessive court docket’s judgment and urged the authorized battle was over. However Turkcell didn’t agree with that evaluation, and sought an enchantment, which can now be heard by the supreme court docket.
The stakes for each corporations are monumental.
Turkcell first filed papers in South Africa in November 2013 concerning a licensing course of in Iran that passed off in 2005 through which it was an energetic participant. The licence went to a consortium that included MTN. Turkcell later sued MTN for US$4.2-billion (R75.3-billion on the time of writing) in damages and has accused MTN over time of paying bribes to safe the licence.
Turkcell claimed it misplaced out to MTN after the latter paid bribes and different inducements to safe the profitable stake. It additionally sought damages within the excessive court docket from former MTN Group CEO Phuthuma Nhleko and former director Irene Charnley, each of whom had been intimately concerned within the negotiations with the Iranians to safe the Irancell licence. Nhleko and Charnley have each denied the allegations.
On its deserves
Cedric Soule, a lawyer for Turkcell, instructed TechCentral an interview on Friday that the corporate strongly disagrees with the excessive court docket’s assertion that South African courts would not have jurisdiction over the case. He mentioned Turkcell will argue on the supreme court docket of enchantment subsequent week that native courts do, certainly, have jurisdiction within the matter and that it ought to be heard in South Africa, on its deserves, by the excessive court docket.
Soule mentioned Turkcell believes it nonetheless has a robust case in opposition to not solely MTN but additionally in opposition to Nhleko and Charnley. “MTN interfered with our contractual rights and took away the GSM licence that was ours,” he alleged.
“The deserves of the case have by no means been dominated on. Whether or not we’re proper or flawed, what we’re excited by is a court docket being confronted by the proof, it and making a dedication on it. We haven’t had that chance.”
He mentioned the “correct place” for this to occur is South Africa, not Iran, which he mentioned doesn’t have a judiciary that’s impartial of the state.
“We don’t consider we are going to get a good listening to in Iran. The Iranian justice system is managed by the state, and we’re making critical allegations in opposition to the Iranian state,” he mentioned. “When Turkcell was kicked out of the GSM licence in 2006, Turkcell utilized to the Iranian courts for an injunction, and it was ignored.”
He mentioned that regardless of the excessive court docket discovering in opposition to Turkcell, the corporate believes that South Africa has an impartial judiciary and that it’ll get a good listening to right here.
Earlier makes an attempt by Turkcell to resolve the matter by worldwide arbitration failed. The corporate approached the South African courts after a legislative change affected the jurisdiction of a US court docket from which it had earlier sought reduction.
It alleged in its software to the US court docket that MTN had conspired with Iranian officers to oust it from the profitable consortium that bid for the licence and take its place by promising to make use of its affect with the South African authorities so it might procure defence tools and garner help for its nuclear improvement programme at conferences of the Worldwide Atomic Power Company.
Learn: Hawks raid MTN workplaces in Turkcell dispute
Turkcell’s authorized problem got here regardless of the findings in 2013 of the Hoffmann Committee, appointed by MTN in 2012, which cleared the South African group of wrongdoing in Iran. That committee, chaired by South African-born former senior British jurist Leonard Hoffmann, discovered there was no conspiracy between MTN and Iranian officers to take away Turkcell from the bidding course of. Certainly, the committee discovered that Turkcell’s allegations had been a “cloth of lies, distortions and innovations”.
The Hoffman report cleared MTN, Nhleko and Charnley of wrongdoing. Lord Hoffmann discovered that MTN made no funds to South Africa’s then ambassador to Iran, Yusuf Saloojee, and neither Nhleko nor Charnley authorised former MTN Irancell director Chris Kilowan to vow him something, as Turkcell had alleged. Kilowan’s allegations type the idea of Turkcell’s claims, however the committee discovered his proof to be “unreliable”. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
