Batelco Group on Monday said that it has demanded full payment of $212 million from Siva Ltd following an order by the English High Court of Justice.

The Bahrain-based telecom company said that C Sivasankaran and Siva Ltd have missed the June 26 deadline set by the court to make the payment.

BMIC Ltd (a fully owned subsidiary of Batelco) approached the English High Court on July 16 and obtained a worldwide freezing order against Siva Group’s assets globally. The order also required Sivasankaran to disclose his assets.

“It is Batelco’s intention to take whatever enforcement action it considers appropriate against the defendants for full payment of the full judgment amount,” Batelco said in a statement.

The London court had ordered the Siva Group to pay $185 million in addition to $30,000 per day from November 1, 2012 as part of an agreement between the two sides signed in 2011.

According to the London Court order seen by BusinessLine , Batelco had picked a 42.7 per cent stake in the Siva Group-promoted S Tel Pvt Ltd. At that time, it was agreed that Batelco was entitled to exercise the put option in the event of a “liquidity event”. This included a failure by S Tel to secure debt finance for $103 million or an event that threatened the licences granted to S Tel by the Indian Government.

‘Option agreement’ After the 2G scam came out in the open, Batelco decided to exercise the put option. But Sivasankaran claimed that the Option Agreement was given as a “personal guarantee” after Batelco’s Chairman persuaded him on grounds that it would “be purely cosmetic and symbolic and for optical purpose and that he would never call on it”.

Meanwhile, in June 2011, the two parties commenced negotiations to settle the put option dispute. The essential shape of the deal was that Batelco reserves the right to sell its S Tel shares to Siva for $174.5 million but Siva was given the right to settle its obligation either in cash or by transferring 79 million shares held by the Siva Group in Tata Teleservices.

TTSL shares at that time encumbered the group and Siva was given 11 months to remove the encumbrance. If the encumbrance were removed in time, the S Tel shares would be sold for $174.5 million and transferred by Batelco to a Siva company and Batelco would purchase TTSL shares for $174.5 million. A deadline of October 31, 2012 was set to complete both the deals, after which Batelco was free to terminate the deal and claim $174.5 million in cash.

In late August 2011, Siva tried to improve the deal for his group by making it conditional on Batelco agreeing to purchase an additional $125 million worth of TTSL shares. Batelco refused.

Meetings to find a solution were held on October 18 and 19, where Siva proposed that the two deals be interlinked. Since a share swap would need the approval of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, Batelco insisted that the two deals be de-linked.

Dismissing Siva’s position, the Royal Courts of Justice in London said that the Siva Group did not seek to complete the TTSL purchase agreement before the deadline and Batelco was never called on to pay for the shares.

Commenting on the development, Batelco Group CEO Alan Whelan said: “We had hoped that Sivasankaran and Siva Ltd would honour the judgment and thus the terms of our original agreement. The defendants are now in breach of the court’s ruling and we require immediate payment.”

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