MTN seeks to reduce $5.2B Nigerian fine | Hacker News Reader

MTN seeks to reduce $5.2B Nigerian fine

bbc.com

36 pointstonteldoos7 comments

On the one hand, $5.2B in 2 weeks is an unreasonable amount of money, and virtually everyone agrees that the value is only that high because of the kidnapping of the Finance Minister.

On the other, MTN's service has been atrocious for the last two years or so (I've been a customer for about 15 years).

$5.2B is too much, but they really do deserve a massive fine.

> $5.2B is too much, but they really do deserve a massive fine.

Apparently it’s just double the annual profits – as a private person, you can easily end up in prison for two years for facilitating the kidnapping of someone, I don’t see why a company shouldn’t “lose out” on two years for facilitating that kidnapping, let alone all the other issues mentioned in the article.

Of course, ideally executives and shareholders would be imprisoned, but one can only wish…

For some reason people are much more willing to execute other people than companies.

Toyota was fined $1.2b in 2014 for deliberately concealing safety defects - something that was linked to actual deaths. It was the biggest fine ever handed down to a car maker by US courts.

I don't see how $5.2b is justifiable in this case.

(This is of course besides the whole issue of whether or not people should be forced to divulge things like their phone numbers to government in the first place...)

The justice system in Nigeria (if it exists…) is not bound by US precedent. Further, deliberately concealing safety defects is usually at most (grossly) negligent manslaughter, not a active participation in an abduction. In this particular case, it was not even just one abduction but a whole series of criminal activities supported by MTN.

Imagine the uproar if Toyota had not concealed safety defects but was selling cars to ISIS operating somewhere in the United States despite an explicit ban to stop doing that.

(Naturally, but whether or not the law is just/fair/appropriate is irrelevant to the question of whether a violation of that law carries an acceptable fine, in particular when the comparison to natural persons is easily available.)

Note that the $5.2B fine was not an arbitrary figure. Right from day one, the penalty for not deactivating unregistered SIM Cards was 200,000 Naira per SIM card. The 5.2B fine was arrived at by multiplying the number of unregistered/partially registered SIM cards by N200K. MTN simply ignored the law believing it wouldn't be applied to them.

All manner of more recent developments after this article as well: 1] MTN share trading has been suspended on the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) 2] In an impressive about turn after threatening to leave South Africa a few weeks ago, they asked the SA government to help negotiate with the Nigerian authorities. 3] Any delay/reduction of the fine has so far been denied by Nigerian authorities.

To put the size of the fine into perspective: Nigerian nominal GDP estimate for 2015 (according to Wikipedia) is ~$564B.

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