South Africa’s Telkom has accused its former chief of global operations Thami Msimango of recklessness and breach of contract in separate courts actions amounting to ZAR60.3 million (US$6 million).
The lawsuit has been filed in the High Court in Pretoria and is included in a summons the part state-owned fixed line operator has already handed to Blue Label Telecoms and four other companies claiming ZAR5.21 billion (US$520.4 million) in damages.
The claims relate to damages felt by Telkom after it signed a deal with Africa Prepaid Services (APSN), a Blue Label subsidiary, and Multi-Links to distribute the latter’s products in Nigeria.
Telkom later cancelled the deal to save costs, but lost more than ZAR10 billion (US$1 billion) over 50 months.
Msimango is no longer employed by Telkom and has been accused of acting “wantonly, recklessly, arbitrarily or capriciously” in signing off on two payments. One was US$1 million to PCCW Global and the other was US$5 million to Multi-Links.
Blue Label Telecoms is challenging the claim brought by Telkom.
