IRANIAN DEAL
Hawks raid MTN over $4.2bn Turkcell lawsuit
The Hawks last week raided the offices of MTN and the mobile operator’s lawyers, Webber Wentzel, to look for evidence of corruption related to MTN’s 2005 Iranian deal. Rival operator Turkcell claims MTN won its licence in Iran by bribing officials. The two companies have been in court over the matter since 2012. Turkcell, which lost out on the licence, is seeking as much as $4.2bn from MTN. Iran is MTN’s third biggest market, via its 49% stake in Irancell. MTN said on Tuesday representatives from the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation – the Hawks — had “visited” MTN and Webber Wentzel’s offices to obtain documents relating to Turkcell’s lawsuit. “MTN is co-operating fully with this investigation,” it said. Turkcell’s claim was “opportunistic, an abuse of the process of court, baseless and without merit”, it said. When Turkcell first made the claims, MTN appointed an independent special committee chaired by international jurist Lord Leonard Hoffmann to investigate the alleg...
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