According to a source, the Russian “Sistema” company will get the fixed “ArmenTel” telecommunications network, while the Armenian-Indian consortium headed by Armenian MP Khachatur Sukiasyan and former prime minister of Armenia Armen Sargsyan will have control over the mobile phones network.
The “Sistema” company neither denied nor confirmed this information, however it did state that they will know the contest results in early August.
According to comnews, the Russian Altimo company (the company controls the “Alpha-Group” telecommunications actives) was the one that suggested declaring a contest for selling 90% of “ArmenTel”‘s stocks. Back in September 2005, Altimo had offered the Greek OTE company 360 million dollars in exchange for 90% of the stocks. Eighty million was going to be used for redeeming the debts of the Armenian operator. However, the Greek company was clever enough to accept the offer and use that amount as enough to move their business forward.
“The Altimo company committed an error by not agreeing with the Armenian government and was satisfied with the help from one government official,” according to the source.
It is worth mentioning that the Greek OTE company doesn’t have the right to sell its stocks without getting permission from the Armenian government, which owns 10% of the stocks. In early 2006, before declaring the contest, the “Sistema” company started negotiating so that it could get the stocks.
“After making an agreement with the Greek company, “Sistema” moved forward by getting on the Armenian government’s good side and also got support from Moscow,” says the same source.
Perhaps Altimo didn’t offer any more money and no longer negotiated because it had already realized what was going on. There were many people participating in the contest, including the German Deutche Telekom, the Norwegian Telenor, the Swedish TeliaSonera and Tele2, as well as the Russian CBOSS companies. None of the companies went on to the next stages.
“The Greek OTE company doesn’t care about the amount when selecting the winner. The political motives are much more important. It’s quite possible that those companies offered larger amounts than “Sistema”,” says the source from comnews.
According to our sources, one of the four qualified companies participating in the contest in early August is the “Vimpelcom” company. The latter represents the Russian “Beeline” trademark and has high chances of winning this contest.