MTN Nigeria strongly refutes allegations of improper repatriation of funds out of Nigeria, it said in a statement this morning.
This after news wires reported that a Nigerian politician had accused the Johannesburg-based company of illegally moving $13.92 billion (R187 billion) out of Nigeria over 10 years.
"The allegations made against MTN are completely unfounded and without any merit," says MTN Nigeria CEO Ferdi Moolman.
The allegation was reportedly made in a motion, submitted to the upper house by senator Dino Melaye, which said the funds had been repatriated "illegally" out of Nigeria between 2006 and 2016 in collusion with a number of commercial banks.
Bloomberg says the banks allegedly involved are Citigroup, Standard Chartered, Stanbic IBTC Holdings and Diamond Bank.
Reuters says lawmakers in the Nigerian Parliament's upper house have agreed to investigate the allegations.
MTN's share price closed more than 3% down yesterday on the news.
The accusation comes three months after MTN agreed to pay a N330 billion (R25 billion at the time, R14 billion now) fine to the Nigerian government after about eight months of negotiations.
The original N1.04 trillion (R71 billion at the time) penalty was slapped on the company last October for failing to meet a deadline to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered SIM cards on the MTN Nigeria network. The fine was later reduced to N780 billion before Nigerian authorities and the MTN leadership agreed on N330 billion, to be paid in instalments over three years.
On Friday, MTN also denied allegations that a top official in the Nigerian presidency took a bribe to reduce the fine.
Nigeria is MTN's biggest market and at the end of June, it had 58.9 million subscribers in the West African nation. MTN has a total of 232.6 million subscribers in 22 operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
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