Telenor, the Norwegian majority shareholder of Bangladeshi telecom giant Grameenphone (GP), has denied ever reaching an agreement with Grameen Telecom chair Prof Muhammad Yunus to sell its stakes to Bangladeshi management.
In a written statement released from Norway on Friday, Telenor, which has 62 percent shares in GP, also threatened to take Yunus to court if he continues to disagree over the shareholder agreement.
Meanwhile, Prof Yunus, whose Grameen Telecom has a 38 percent stake in GP, yesterday backed off from earlier suggestions that he would take Telenor to court to force the deal.
He told a press conference in the Norwegian capital Oslo yesterday that it is unlikely he would take the matter to the court for arbitration.
"This is not an outcome that we think is necessary," Prof Yunus said, later adding that it is a "remote possibility". He said, "We are not the kind of people to rush to the courts.”
Telenor dismissed Yunus' claims about the two sides agreeing on a deal in 1996 that within six years the joint company would be locally operated by Bangladeshi management with majority Bangladeshi ownership.
”In the conflict regarding the ownership of Grameenphone, Telenor disagrees with Muhammad Yunus that we have an agreement to sell our stake in the company to him," Telenor said in the statement.
It threatened that further disagreement on this issue would be dealt with in court. "We would like to emphasise that the shareholder agreement clearly states that any disagreements should be resolved through the Swedish courts," Telenor said.
The Norwegian company, of which 54 percent stakes are owned by the Norwegian government, admitted to recent media findings of child labour and poor working conditions in GP distributorships.
But it stressed that Grameen Telecom and Bangladesh government have equal responsibility in resolving these matters.
"Nobody can define themselves as exempt from this responsibility. In this context, it is irrelevant whether you own 62% or 38% of a company. This responsibility starts by demonstrating a cooperative attitude," the Telenor statement says.
Telenor also lashed out at Yunus' statement, saying it felt that the two sides reached an amicable solution at two meetings preceding the release of the statement.
"It would have been reasonable to expect Professor Yunus to mention these accusations during our meeting earlier that day, particularly as the release of this statement had apparently already been planned prior to our meeting," the statement reads.
"Muhammad Yunus is a highly influential person in Bangladesh with extensive knowledge of the business sector in the country. Rather than attacking Telenor, we have urged Yunus to cooperate with us to address the unacceptable conditions as quickly as possible," it adds.
Telenor also said it agreed with Yunus to further investigate the people responsible for GP's illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) operations, for which the government fined it $60 million.