Telecommunications group MTN on Friday said it would continue defending its position in a legal battle after the MTN-appointed Hoffmann Committee’s year-long investigation found Turkcell's allegations against it to be “a fabric of lies, distortions and inventions".
MTN came under pressure last year after Turkey-based mobile operator Turkcell lodged a $4.2-billion lawsuit in a US court accusing the South African company of engaging in corrupt behaviour to secure a mobile licence in Iran.
The Turkish operator is accusing MTN of violating the US Alien Tort Statute by allegedly bribing former South African ambassador to Iran, Yusuf Saloojee, Iranian official Javid Ghorbanoghli, and other South African and Iranian government officials, in efforts to win the licence in 2005.
Turkcell also claimed that MTN lobbied South Africa to back Tehran's nuclear development programme, while promising Iran the group would use its political “influence” to procure the supply of defence equipment to Iran.
The Hoffmann Committee, which was headed up by British Supreme Court judge Lord Leonard Hoffmann, and which comprised MTN independent nonexecutive directors Peter Mageza and Jeff van Rooyen, found that the accusations – allegedly based on information supplied by former employee Christian Kilowan – were inaccurate and held no indication or evidence of conspiracy or bribery.
Kilowan was involved in MTN’s Iranian operations from August 2004 to November 2007.
“Lord Hoffmann’s committee has determined that the Turkcell allegations are without foundation … [and] concluded that he found nothing in the conduct of MTN over this period that puts at question MTN’s integrity or propriety,” MTN group chairperson Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.
The report allegedly cleared MTN former group president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN former commercial director Irene Charnley, as well as the involvement of Ramaphosa and current group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa, of all bribery accusations.
In October, the US Supreme Court placed the case against MTN on hold while a decision on whether the case could be heard in the US was pending.
MTN, which believed the case should be heard in South Africa, Iran or Turkey, requested Washington district court Judge Reggie Walton to either dismiss the case outright or stay it until after the Supreme Court renders its decision on what has become known as the “Kiobel case”.
The case brought to the fore the question of whether the 1789 Alien Tort Statute, which has been used since the 1980s to bring international human rights cases in US courts, could apply to corporations, and whether the law could be invoked in similar cases against anyone.
The Supreme Court, using the Kiobel case as a base, would determine if Turkcell’s case against MTN should be heard in a US court when neither was a US company and the alleged conduct happened in foreign territory.
The court’s decision was expected in June.
The 193-page Hoffmann Commission report, with a further 500 pages of appendices, was compiled through the consideration and investigation of available evidence, electronic and documentary records, the testimony of Kilowan and several expert reports commissioned by the Hoffmann Committee, besides others.