MTS first asked Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) to approve the sale of its Armenian subsidiary to the little-known company, Fedilco Group Limited, last spring. The PSRC rejected the request at the time, saying that the deal could damage the country’s national security. It did not elaborate.
MTS, which runs Russia’s largest mobile phone network, filed another request in November and it was granted this time around. The company announced on Thursday that the sale of the Viva-MTS operator to Fedilco for an undisclosed amount has been completed.
A separate statement released by Viva-MTS said that its new parent company, which was reportedly registered in Cyprus in 2022, is controlled by “professional investors” Zhe Zhang and Konstantin Sokolov. It said they intend to cede 20 percent of shares in Viva-MTS to the Armenian government in view of the cellphone operator’s “strategic importance” to the country.
The PSRC did not clarify whether it dropped its initial opposition to the deal because of the lavish donation pledged by Fedilco. A senior official from the regulatory body, Armen Hunanian, said only that the PSRC followed the recommendations of the Armenian Ministry of High-Technology. The ministry declined to comment on Friday.
Fedilco is the third foreign company to give the government a sizable minority stake in its Armenian subsidiary. Russia’s GeoProMining group was the first to do so right after buying Armenia’s largest metallurgical enterprise in 2021.
And just last week, the government was formally granted a 12.5 percent stake in a multimillion-dollar gold mining project which it helped to freeze in 2018. The government pledged last year to help U.S. and Canadian investors revive the Amulsar project.