 |
| Eric Holder, US Attorney |
MTN Nigeria has hired a former United
States Attorney General, Eric Holder as counsel to challenge the $3.9 billion
fine slammed on the company by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) over
its failure to meet up with the deadline to disconnect unregistered subscribers
on its network.
According to the Financial
Times report of yesterday, the giant telecommunication company in
Nigeria has concluded arrangement to have the prominent attorney represent it
over the fine dispute. Investigations
though not from the official source indicated that Holder has already initiated
the first meeting with the government and NCC towards amicable settlement.
Holder, who was one of President Barack
Obama’s serving cabinet members, led the US Justice Department from 2009 to
2015. He however returned to a private law firm; Covington & Burling, where
he was hitherto a partner.
It would be recalled that due to the
failure of the telecommunication company to meet with the deadline given by the
regulatory body, an initial fine of fine $5.2bn was handed down on MTN and
subsequently reduced by 25 per cent to the present $3.9bn following a concentrated
pleas.
MTN divergently, did not reciprocate on
the gesture, rather sought a legal order to restrict NCC from going ahead with
the fine contending that the regulatory body lacked powers to impose the fine
on it.
Incidentally, the Federal High Court
judge sitting in Lagos last month did not grant the prayers rather gave MTN
time to settle the dispute.
However, our efforts to confirm the
development from MTN head office were yet to yield positive result at the time
of filing this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment