{"id":8874,"date":"2012-04-02T10:22:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T08:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=8874"},"modified":"2012-04-02T12:49:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T10:49:45","slug":"mtn-shares-wilt-under-iran-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/8874\/mtn-shares-wilt-under-iran-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN shares wilt under Iran cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shares in mobile operator MTN (MTN)<\/a> declined more than 3% Monday (April 2, 2012) amid uncertainty, and the potential implications of a lawsuit lodged by TurkCell<\/a> over the company’s operations in Iran.<\/p>\n

By 10:00am local time, shares in MTN declined R4.27 or 3.16% on the JSE.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Turkish mobile operator Turkcell, which has been battling MTN over the Iranian licence, launched a $4.2 billion lawsuit in a US court accusing MTN of bribing its way to the Iranian licence.<\/p>\n

Turkcell is seeking damages over the award of the cellular licence in Iran in 2004.<\/p>\n

A dealer at financial services company, PSG Konsult, noted that a potential hit of $4.2 billion would mean R32 billion in rand terms, \u201ca huge chunk of money. It represents 12% of MTN\u2019s market cap. It\u2019s a hefty amount. This has, without doubt, put pressure on the group\u2019s share price this morning, along with the general uncertainty surrounding the matter,\u201d the dealer said.<\/p>\n

“Newly-received information by Turkcell indicates that the signing of the licence agreement with MTN, instead of our company, was a consequence of MTN’s actions,” Turkcell said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“In light of the harm caused by MTN’s actions, to both Turkcell and to its shareholders, Turkcell today (Thursday, 29 March 2012) filed a lawsuit against MTN seeking the compensation of such damages.”<\/p>\n

MTN said it would oppose the claim filed in the US federal courts. “MTN continues to believe that there is no legal merit to Turkcell’s claim, and no basis for such claim to be brought before a US court. MTN will, accordingly, oppose the claim. MTN further notes the South African government’s denial of the allegations that MTN exercised influence over it,” it said.<\/p>\n

Reuters reported that former chief executive of MTN Group denied on Sunday (1 April 2012) that he authorized bribes to Iranian and South African government officials in return for a cellular license in Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can state quite categorically that during my tenure as group CEO of MTN, no bribes were authorized or paid by the MTN Group to any South African or Iranian government officials to secure the mobile license in Iran,\u201d Phuthuma Nhleko<\/a> said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Nhleko, who was then the CEO of MTN, is named in the suit, as well as its current CEO, who was then the chief operating officer.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Former MTN CEO denies Iran bribery accusations<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN\u2019s cash, weapons and ties in Iran<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN\/Turkcell talks break down amid extortion claims<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN mum on Irancell<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN shares off as investors await Turkcell clarity<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shares in mobile operator MTN (MTN) declined more than 3% Monday (April 2, 2012) amid uncertainty and the potential implications of a lawsuit lodged by TurkCell over its operations in Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,1361,371,28,2181,1310,1292],"class_list":["post-8874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-irancell","tag-lawsuit","tag-mtn","tag-phuthuma-nhleko","tag-psg-konsult","tag-turkcell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8874"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8876,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874\/revisions\/8876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}