Russian Court Freezes SMARTS' Shares Once Again

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (Prime-Tass) -- Russia's regional court in St. Petersburg has frozen 100% of the shares of Russian regional mobile operator SMARTS, Kommersant business daily reported Friday, citing Gennady Kiryushin, the company's general director.

The decision was made on Monday, the same day when a local court in Russia's Stavropol Region revised its earlier made decision and ruled to unfreeze 100% of the shares of SMARTS, Kommersant said.

A court in St. Petersburg froze SMARTS' shares after one Vladimir Ivanov filed a suit against a Roman Veselov, claiming that the latter was to buy SMARTS' bonds worth 1 million rubles and transfer them to Ivanov but failed to do it, Vedomosti business daily reported Friday, adding that SMARTS' bonds were guaranteed by SMARTS' shares.

After the court in the Stavropol Region ruled to freeze SMARTS' shares for the first time, Kiryushin said that the only aim of the suit was to block the company's operations and to knock down its share price, adding that the company that filed the suit as well as the defendant were both never SMARTS' shareholders.

SMARTS is currently negotiating with several companies on selling a stake and is also preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), Kiryushin said last week.

The offering is preliminarily scheduled for early 2006.

Kiryushin is the largest shareholder of SMARTS with a 26.4% stake. Other shareholders are his son Konstantin Kiryushin with 20.5%, Boris Skvortsov, the company's chairman of the board of directors, with 19.1%, and Alexei Titov, son of the Samara Region

Posted to the site on 7th October 2005