MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) - A Bermuda-based investment fund involved in a dispute with a major Russian financial group warned Monday that a fake Web site could appear under the company's name in the near future.
IPOC, which has been in a long-running wrangle with Alfa Group over a 25.1% stake in MegaFon (RTS: MEGF), Russia's third largest cellphone operator, currently held by LV Finance and other Alfa subsidiaries based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), said a new domain name, www.ipocfund.ru, had been registered and that an information war against it was being unleashed.
The fund said it had nothing to do with either the Internet site or any information posted there.
IPOC argues that LV Finance and Alfa Group knowingly struck a deal to try to sell the Megafon stake twice, in an international fraud with BVI companies at its heart. The sale process involved a complex web of over a dozen offshore companies, several based in the British Virgin Islands, including the three Alfa subsidiaries that presently hold the stake.
It won the only substantive final ruling in the Megafon dispute to date when the International Chamber of Commerce in Geneva, in a ruling upheld by the Swiss Federal Courts, found that Alfa and LV Finance had knowingly engaged in an illegal scheme to deprive IPOC of its rightful ownership of part of the shareholding in dispute.
IPOC is a longstanding investor in Megafon, and currently already holds an 8% stake in the company in addition to the disputed 25.1% stake.
LV Finance signed two option agreements in April and December 2001 with IPOC to sell IPOC 100% of Transcontinental Mobile Investment Limited (TMI), itself the sole owner of CT Mobile (CTM), which holds 25.1% of Megafon. However, Alfa Group later announced its purchase of LV Finance's all assets, including CTM.
