Fedilco Group Limited, a little-known firm registered in Cyprus, ceded the 20 percent stake in January 2024 after Armenian state regulators allowed it to buy the Viva Armenia operator from Russia’s MTS telecom giant. The authorities in Yerevan had blocked the takeover in 2023, citing national security concerns.
The government said that Fedilco has requested an option to buy back the stake. It accepted the offer on the condition that the company pays $50 million and meets other conditions not publicized by it.
A government statement gave no reason for the decision. Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan also did not clearly explain it when he spoke to journalists after a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
Fedilco is the third foreign company to have given the government sizable minority shares in its Armenian subsidiary free of charge. Russia’s GeoProMining group was the first to do so right after buying Armenia’s largest metallurgical enterprise in 2021. And earlier in January 2024, the government was formally granted a 12.5 percent stake in a multimillion-dollar gold mining project which it helped to freeze in 2018 but is now trying to revive.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has repeatedly touted those donations which raised questions among local analysts. One of them, Suren Parsian, said the planned sale of the Viva Armenia stake is at odds with Pashinian’s statements.
“These processes carried out by them are based not on a clearly defined economic or property policy but on some personal calculations or personal agreement,” Parsian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Viva Armenia, formerly called Viva-MTS, employs about 1,200 people and claims to have over 2 million mobile phone subscribers. Its parent company is officially controlled by Chinese investor Zhe Zhang and Konstantin Sokolov, an apparently Russian-born entrepreneur.
Last month, Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission gave the green light for Fedilco’s acquisition of a major local provider of cable TV and Internet services currently owned by another Russian giant, Rostelecom.