DUSHANBE, December 24, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Cellular company, Tacom, which operates in Tajikistan under the trademark of Beeline, has been obligated to pay some 1 million somoni (TJS) in damages to Tajik Internet-provider Intercom for blocking Intercom’s internetworking flows last December.

The Dushanbe city economic court ruled on December 23 that Tacom must reopen the digital flows that were blocked in early December 2008.

According to Intercom officials, the court also ruled that Tacom must pay some 1 million somoni to Intercom for damage caused by Tacom’s actions to Intercom during the period from early December 2008 to April 2009.

Ulughbek Muhammadiyev, a lawyer with Intercom, said in an interview with ComNews that Tacom blocked international communications flows on December 1, 2008 that is in contrary with an agreement on international and transit traffic that was concluded between the companies in June 2008.

In the meantime, Artyom Minayev, a spokesman for VympelCom (Beeline), considers that the ruling of the appeals instance of the Dushanbe economic court was made with serious violation of Tajikistan’s legislation.

According to him the appeals instance did not take into consideration Tacom’s arguments and afforded proofs.  He stressed that the court of the first instance had not answered to Intercom’s claim because of groundlessness of its arguments and inefficiency of the submitted proofs.