US Treasury allowed Veon to sell VimpelCom

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury issued Veon permission to sell the Russian operator “VimpelCom(operating under the Beeline brand). About it reported in the financial report of the Dutch holding for the first quarter of 2023

“OFAC issued a license on April 15, 2023 allowing the participation of American persons in all transactions related to and necessary for the sale of VimpelCom,” the company said.

It is clarified that Veon has the appropriate permissions from the authorities of the UK and Bermuda. The holding does not consider it necessary to obtain an EU license for the sale of Russian assets, the report says.

Previously, the sale of Vimpelcom also approved FAS and the Russian government commission for the control of foreign investment in the Russian Federation.

November 2022 Veon announced on an agreement to sell VimpelCom to Russian top managers of the company. The buyers of the asset were the general director of the Russian operator Alexander Torbakhov and a group of top managers – Svetlana Kirsanova, Maxim Zaikov, Valery Shorzhin and Renat Nasretdinov, the company said in a statement.

The deal is planned to be closed by June 2023. Vimpelcom was then valued at 370 billion rubles, but the amount of the transaction was less – 130 billion rubles. The remaining 240 billion rubles. is the net debt of VimpelCom within the total debt of Veon Holdings BV, which the company will assume and repay, a representative of VimpelCom reported to Vedomosti in November 2022.