MTS to pay US $850 million fine regarding corruption cases in Uzbekistan

The Russian mobile operator MTS has entered into an agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Justice Department regarding the investigation of the former operator’s subsidiary in Uzbekistan and will pay a fine of $850 million as part of it, the press service of the company said.

The company noted that the agreement puts an end to the investigation around the former MTS subsidiary in Uzbekistan from 2004 to mid-2012.

The MTS fine will be paid out of the funds reserved for this purpose in the third quarter of 2018.

In the spring of 2015, the US Justice Department, together with the Dutch prosecutor's office, launched an investigation into the transactions of Vimpelcom, MTS and the Scandinavian TeliaSonera with Takilant, which is associated with the daughter of ex-President of Uzbekistan Gulnara Karimova. In August of that year, the US authorities appealed to five European countries with a request to block assets for one billion dollars in the framework of the Uzbek case investigation.

According to investigators, telecom operators, using a corruption scheme, transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to structures associated with Karimova, in exchange for the right to enter the market of Uzbekistan, for receiving frequencies and for other transactions in the country. In 2016, Vimpelcom paid a $795 million fine in this case.