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Telenor (OSL:TEL) (Fornebu, Norway and Omsk, Russia - 18 November 2008) The Eighth Arbitrazh Appellate Court in Omsk in Siberia has postponed until 12 December 2008 the hearing of Telenor's appeal of the USD 2.8 billion judgment issued against the Norwegian company last August in Khanty-Mansiysk.
"We note that the Omsk court has postponed the hearing of Telenor's appeal," said Jan Edvard Thygesen, Executive Vice President and head of Telenor's Central and Eastern European operations. "Until now, this case has been a judicial farce. Telenor's rights were consistently violated by the court in Khanty-Mansisysk, which should never have accepted the case in the first place," said Mr. Thygesen.
The original case was filed by little-known British Virgin Islands-based Farimex Products, Inc., which claimed that VimpelCom suffered financial harm allegedly caused by Telenor due to delays in VimpelCom's acquisition of loss-making Ukrainian mobile operation, Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS). Farimex is a BVI shell company, which claims to hold a 0.002 per cent stake in VimpelCom and whose sole director is Dmitry Fridman.
"The court proceedings in Khanty-Mansiysk seriously undermine the efforts of the President of Russia to promote the rule of law, judicial reform and financial stability of our country. This case is not simply a case against a Norwegian public company, it is a case against Russia's own national interests," said Dimitry Afanasiev, partner in the law firm of Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners, one of the firms representing Telenor in this case.
Contacts: Dag Melgaard, Vice President Group Communications, Telenor ASA, tel: (+47) 901 92 000 Anna Ivanova-Galitsina, PR and Communications Director, Telenor Russia, tel: (+7 495) 937 9588
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