SMARTS Says Court Unfreezes its Shares

MOSCOW, July 19 (Prime-Tass) -- The Presidium of Russia's St. Petersburg city court has unfrozen the shares of Russian regional mobile operator SMARTS, the operator said in a press release Wednesday.

The court found that all previous court decisions to freeze the company's shares were groundless, SMARTS said.

In 2005-2006, four St. Petersburg district courts separately ordered to freeze SMARTS shares in court cases that were not directly related to the operator.

SMARTS, or Middle-Volga Interregional Association of Radio and Telecommunication Systems, operates a GSM 900/1800 standard network in 16 Russian regions, where 33.9 million people live, or 24% of the Russian population. SMARTS? total subscriber base was at 3.293 million users as of June 30, according to Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M).

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Posted to the site on 19th July 2006