French media company Vivendi said today it had filed a complaint in a US court against Deutsche Telekom unit T-Mobile over a deal between the German firm and Poland's Elektrim.
Vivendi said it filed a complaint in the State of Washington last night charging that T-Mobile had illegally appropriated Vivendi's $2.5 billion investment in one of Poland's leading telecommunications companies, Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa sp (PTC).
Deutsche Telekom earlier this month agreed to buy Elektrim's stake in PTC for €600 million.
Ownership of the stake in eastern Europe's second-largest mobile phone operator has been the subject of a long-standing legal battle between Deutsche Telekom, Europe's biggest telecoms group by sales, and Vivendi, which controls French mobile phone group SFR.
The dispute centres around whether Deutsche Telekom has the right to exercise a call option over a 48 per cent stake in PTC. Vivendi says Elektrim cannot sell the stake, arguing that it does not belong to Elektrim, but to Elektrim Telekomunikacja, a holding company in which both Elektrim and Vivendi have a stake.
But in June, an arbitration court in Vienna said Elektrim could sell the stake to Deutsche Telekom, giving the German telecoms group control over 97 per cent of PTC, which has 10 million customers.
Earlier this month, Vivendi filed a criminal complaint in Warsaw against Deutsche Telekom and Elektrim. Vivendi said that complaint was to protect its rights as a creditor in the framework of the bankruptcy proceedings of Elektrim and to prevent any transfer of PTC shares.