Tashkent confiscates MTS assets

The Tashkent Criminal Court has ordered the confiscation of the assets of Russian-backed cellco MTS Uzbekistan in a criminal case against the operator. Reuters reports that the court also sentenced four of the cellco’s managers to two and half years of ‘corrective’ labour and further three-year ban from returning to business. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, the cellco has fallen victim to a government-driven shakedown which saw the company forced to close down operations from July this year, leaving its 9.5 million subscribers without service. MTS said in a statement: ‘MTS disagrees with the unfair sentence on the four Uzdunrobita employees… MTS reserves the right to use all legal means, first of all on the international level, to recover the damages … it incurred as a result of illegal actions against its Uzbek subsidiary.’