MOSCOW, May 26 (Prime-Tass) -- The shareholders of Russia's Internafta said that U.S. telecommunications equipment producer GlobeTel was responsible for the failure to implement a U.S $600 million project to build a WiMAX network in Russia, Vedomosti business daily reported.
The agreement between the two companies to build the network was signed on December 29, 2005, and was cancelled by GlobeTel on May 1.
Vadim Tataurov, who owned a 25% stake in Russia's Internafta - a company that was established specifically for the project - said that during the project?s negotiations, which took place in November 2005, GlobeTel's CEO Timothy Huff was in a rush to close the deal by the end of the year "to make (GlobeTel's) shareholders happy," the daily reported. Meanwhile, the Russian businessmen said during the talks that it would take about three months to prepare the contract.
As a result, Internafta failed to meet the deadline for its first payment under the contract, which was scheduled for January 16, as nobody took into account the Russian New Year holidays, which lasted from January 1 to January 9, Tataurov said
Internafta made the first payment but at a later date, Tataurov claimed, vedomsoto reported.
Tataurov and Sergei Zhukov, another Internafta shareholder with a 25% stake, claimed that GlobeTel lost interest in the project after the agreement was signed, Vedomosti reported.
They also said that GlobeTel's managers offered them to buy GlobeTel shares before signing the contract, Vedomosti reported.
A source in GlobeTel Wireless Europe denied all the accusations, the daily reported.
Following the cancellation of the agreement, GlobeTel's shareholders accused the company of faking the agreement. Lawyers at Sarraf Gentile, filed in early May a lawsuit on behalf of GlobeTel's shareholders against the U.S. company and some of its top managers with a court in the U.S. state of Florida.
Information about the deal with Internafta moved the U.S. company's shares up, while the announcement of the cancellation of the deal sent the shares into a downward spiral, Sarraf Gentile said then.
GlobeTel's capitalization rose to $410 million as of December 2005 from $210 million after the signing of the agreement and fell to $130 million after the cancellation of the agreement, as of Thursday, the daily reported.
Some Russian market observers speculated earlier that Internafta's owners might have set up the company to obtain a developed business plan from GlobeTel for the WiMAX project, without having any intention to cooperate with the U.S. company.
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