Wednesday, December 28, 2016

MTN issues first payment to Nigeria for $254 million fine

Telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria has paid $254 million of the $1 billion fine imposed on it for failing to deactivate more than five million unregistered sim cards in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications Adebayo Shittu said the company paid the sum as the first installment out of the three years given for the completion of the payment.

MTN was initially fined $5.2 billion but the fine was later reduced to $1 billion after negotiating the fine with the Nigerian government.

The fine, according to the law is $636 for each unregistered sim cards and in this instance, MTN’s violation was to the tune of five million lines.

Shittu said MTN accepted that they were in default, apologised for it, made a commitment never to allow such a thing to happen again and asked for remission.

Should the company had paid the initial sum of over $5 billion dollars, the minister said the mobile operator would have folded up hence the need to reconsider the fine.

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