UPDATED: The battle for control of the Polish mobile telecom market has moved from the
courts of Europe to a Seattle federal courthouse.
Using the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, French telecom and
entertainment giant Vivendi filed suit Monday against T-Mobile, the U.S. unit of
its long-time German rival Deutsche Telecom (DT).
The suit charges T-Mobile
and Poland’s Elektrim joined forces to steal Vivendi’s $2.5 billion
investment in one of that country’s top telecom players.
Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, who controlled Elektrim and was one of Vivendi’s
partners in its investment in Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC), was also named in the suit along with T-Mobile Deutschland Gmbh and Deutsche Telecom.
Vivendi chair Jean-Bernard Levy told reporters the French telecom firm plans
to call T-Mobile and DT executives to testify about what it claims were
e-mail and phone conversations which point to a scheme to wrest control of
PTC, another leading telecommunications firm in
Poland.
In the 32-page lawsuit, Vivendi charges the defendants “engaged in a massive
multi-year racketeering conspiracy to illegally seize PTC.”
T-Mobile and the
others named in the suit “have now succeeded in wrenching PTC away from
Vivendi and have deprived Vivendi of its $2.5 billion investment,” according
to the complaint.
“T-Mobile induced our partner to secretly conspire against us,” Levy said.
For its part, T-Mobile USA refused comment. “T-Mobile USA does not comment
on pending litigation,” a spokesperson told internetnews.com. DT did
not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Vivendi charged T-Mobile and Solorz-Zak colluded in a
“pattern of racketeering activity over U.S. wires as part of an unlawful
scheme to take over an enterprise, PTC, and corrupt another enterprise,
Elektrim.”
Levy gave an analogy of buying a home with a partner then finding himself on
the street and his name removed from the title.
“Vivendi asks the court for
a simple remedy: give us back our money or our PTC shares,” he said in a
statement. “Fairness and justice must prevail.”
The dispute over ownership of PTC has raged since 1999. Vivendi owns 25
percent via a holding company with Elektrim the minority partner. Elektrim
holds it is full owner of the holding company.
After not receiving an answer
from DT on a September offer to buy its German rival’s holdings in PTC, in
October, Vivendi dismissed DT’s claim it had purchased Elektrim’s stake in
PTC.
