Turkcell's dropping of a $4.2 billion lawsuit against Africa's largest cellphone operator, MTN, is only temporary, reports the City Press this morning.
The paper says Turkcell, which had accused MTN of bribery in a bid to gain a licence to operate in Iran, is shopping for a new jurisdiction after it dropped its efforts in the US. Turkcell withdrew the matter after a ruling that limited foreign companies' ability to approach the US for relief in actions without sufficient connections to the US.
Turkcell filed the $4.2 billion lawsuit against MTN in the US district court in Washington last March. MTN had opposed Turkcell's claim, saying it lacked legal merit and there was no basis for it to be brought before a US court.
Turkcell's case had a setback in April when the US Supreme Court limited the ability of human rights plaintiffs to invoke a 224-year-old law, the Alien Tort Statute.
The federal court had postponed its decision on the Turkcell suit as it waited for the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling on the use of the Alien Tort Statute. According to Reuters, Turkcell dropped its bid this week, citing the Supreme Court ruling.
In February, MTN's board appointed a committee to investigate the allegations made by Turkcell, which was chaired by an independent jurist, Lord Leonard Hoffmann. This February, the committee determined that Turkcell's allegations did not have any foundation, MTN said in a statement.
The committee found nothing around MTN's conduct "that put at question MTN's integrity or propriety during the period that Iran's second mobile licence was awarded", the operator stressed.
MTN CEO and president Sifiso Dabengwa has said: "Turkcell's decision to drop their claim was expected; however, we welcome it."
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