According to the statement released by the company, Zain the Kuwaiti telecom operator will keep on fighting the $262 million fine that has been implemented on the Iraq operations in spite of the frozen bank accounts.
Zain is the number one mobile operator of Iraq and it has the about 53 % of the total market share. The fine was implemented in the month of February in 2011 and the reason behind this fine was issuing 5 million SIM cards in the market without permission.
When the fine was implemented, Zain said that it will appeal against the fine and then 18 months of deadlock was implemented on the company. After that, the Communication and Media Commission has increased the ante.
In the answer that Zain has emailed, it has said that some of its Iraqi accounts are frozen at the moment but they are expecting for some positive news in this matter soon. They have also confirmed that their official position on this dispute is that, they are not to be blamed for the fine.
At the same time the company has not agreed to disclose any information regarding the value of the accounts.
Zain has been asked about its opinion on the move or decision of the regulator and in answer the company has stated that they believe the regulator is doing things that they feel to be right, at the same time they are pretty surprised that the whole thing has been conducted without a formal court ruling.
The commissioner of CMC, Mr. Ahmed Alomary has confirmed the fact that the agency is right now studying all about the decision of including only the fine amount in the seizure. This current decision is also quite harmful for the commission because it is not getting the revenues earned by Zain from the market of Iraq.
Alomary has told that the commission is revising its decision of including the amount of fine into the seizure and after the discussion between the two parties the commission is thinking about not including the amount of money in the bank.
He also added that the decision may be taken within about two weeks only.
According to the statement of Alomary, Zain has appealed to the body affiliated by the Iraqi judiciary council and that body is revising the decision of placing the fine in the first place.
According to the annual report of the company, the market of Iraq has provided 12.4 million of the total amount f customers of Zain and has provided about 35% of the total revenue.
It has been stated that Zain Iraq, its rivals Asiacell (part of the Qatar telecom) and Korek (affiliated by France Telecom) were to complete the mandatory initial public offering as a part of the license (worth $1.25 billion) they have in Iraq but all of them had missed their deadline way back in the august of 2011.
In the month of July, the CMC has announced that it would fine Zain from September at a rate of $12,864 per day for failing to fulfill the deadline. It has imposed fine on the other telecom operators in the market.
Source [Reuters]