BeST shares bought by Sweden. Swedish media call the deal “cooperation with dictatorship”

TeliaSonera Mobile Networks has bought shares of “BeST” mobile operator in Belarus via Turkish Turkcell.

The influential Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet calls it “the shady deal of the month”, and warns the leadership of TeliaSonera that cooperation with the Belarusian dictatorship is aimed against democracy, Radio Svaboda informs.

Last year Turkish company Turkcell bought 80% of shares of one of Belarusian mobile operators, the closed joint-stock society BeST. Besides, the company promised to invest additional millions in BeST network.

Then the director general of the Turk company Mekhmet Sureyya Ciliv said:

“We have come here as good partners, we would like to cooperate to make BeST one of the best companies of the world. We believe that Belarus has a rather high potential both in the economy and in technologies. We are very glad to cooperate with Belarus, and we believe that signing of today’s agreement would be another step towards more productive cooperation between Belarus and Turkey”.

Turkcell is the leading mobile phone operator of Turkey, based in Istanbul. The Swedish TeliaSonera owns 37% of Turkcell's shares. Acting together with Turkish partners who own shares of the company, Swedes have done a lot to advance to the post-Soviet markets. As for direct meetings with Belarus and regimes of the kind, as long as the company carries out a policy of “zero-tolerance to corruption”, such deals are highly problematic.

As Svenska Dagbladet writes, thanks to Turkcell Sweden is not involved in cooperation with dictatorship and won’t be responsible for the shady deal. However, in fact Sweden cooperates with Lukashenka’s regime. Swedish reviewers warn their taxpayers that their money could be used for support of undemocratic regime in Belarus.

Starting cooperation with Minsk authorities looks no less than naïve, thinks Russian expert in the sphere of telecommunication technologies Leonid Konik.

“Firstly, you cannot do business in Belarus without paying some illegal money to state officials or Lukashenka’s apparatus,” the expert says. “Secondly, in such countries as Belarus there is great different between the official statements and reality. From the formal point of view, owner of a mobile phone can go to court for wiretapping his or her conversations. In reality all telecommunication companies that cooperate with such regimes are to install equipment for wiretapping”.

The same opinion is held by Swedish experts in human rights sphere. Basing upon materials about Belarus they believe that telecommunication networks in the country are likely to be used for wiretapping or surveillance over political opponents.