US court rules Telsim owners guilty of fraud
The latest fight in the ongoing war between Motorola and Telsim ended yesterday when a US judge ordered the Turkish mobile phone operator's owners to cough up $4.3 billion.
The judgment comes less than a week after Telsim said a Geneva-based court said its adversary was not able to prove that Telsim's owners, the Uzan family, had committed fraud as Motorola had alleged.
Motorola seems to have managed to have proved its claims to the satisfaction of the US court, but the chances of it actually collecting the money are slim.
Motorola, along with Nokia, accused the Uzans of fraud early last year. The companies claimed Telsim's owners had pocketed over $3 billion in loans made to Telsim by both companies. Those loans were secured with Telsim stock, but the Uzans moved the money into other ventures over which Nokia and Motorola had no claim, the manufacturers said.
US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff yesterday ruled that the Uzans had indeed kept Motorola's money for themselves, perpetrating "a huge fraud... through an almost endless series of lies, threats and chicanery".
