The Megaphone is Russia's third-largest mobile telephone operator.
The Alfa Group made an underhand deal to obtain Megaphone stock, deems the tribunal. The International Chamber of Commerce has tracked the issue down to an arrangement made by the LV Finance and the Alfa to transfer Megaphone stock from the LV balance to the Alfa. In that, the dealers were perfectly conscious of trespassing IPOC rights to the stock, and fixed in an IPOC-LV option.
The Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce had appointed three independent legal experts for the Geneva tribunal-a British, a Russian and a Swiss. Its verdict is coming as a first legally binding decision in the dispute between the IPOC, thr LV Finance and the Alfa Group. The IPOC regards its victory as key stride in the efforts to ensure its rights for the disputed Megaphone block, says the release.
The IPOC brought an arbitration suit a year ago, after a plot surfaced in which Leonid Rozhetskin, LV Finance president, and Mikhail Friedman, Alfa Group president, attempted to rob the fund of its Megaphone block. They arranged an offshore network of go-betweens to pass the block into Alfa's hands, the release goes on.
Arbitration procedures on another IPOC-LV Finance option are to start in Zurich, September's latter half.
"Mikhail Friedman's Alfa Group and the LV Finance perfectly knew what they were doing when they schemed to remove Megaphone assets and robbed the IPOC of its property rights for those assets. That is clear. We greet the International Chamber of Commerce resolution, which confirmed those facts," says Roland Bopp, IPOC Capital Partners manager.
