Africa’s largest mobile telecommunications company, MTN says it is investigating claims that it paid protection money to militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan.
Complaints were filed in a US federal court on Friday, 27th December 2019, regarding the violation US anti-terrorism laws.
It was filed on behalf of families of US soldiers who died in attacks in Afghanistan.
The complaint alleges MTN paid bribes to al-Qaida and the Taliban to avoid having to invest in in expensive security for their transmission towers.
MTN is not the only company complicit in the alleged bribery.
The payments allegedly helped finance a Taliban-led insurgency that led to the attacks in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017, according to reports.
It is alleged that the money helped to provide “material support to known terrorist organisations,” thus violating the anti-terrorism legislation.
The South African telecommunications giant says it remains of the view that it conducts its business in a “responsible and compliant manner in all its territories”.
MTN is Africa’s largest mobile operator and the eighth largest in the world, with more than 240 million subscribers.
In 2015, the firm was fined more than $5bn (£3.8bn) by the Nigerian authorities for failing to cut off unregistered sim cards – a figure that was reduced to $1.7bn after a long legal dispute and the intervention of South Africa’s then President Jacob Zuma.
In February, a former South African ambassador to Iran was arrested in the capital, Pretoria, on charges that he took a bribe to help MTN win a $31.6bn (£24bn) license to operate in Iran.
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