The Financial Times has reported (12 February 2014) that, following the news of the collapse of talks between UK mobile phone giant Vodafone and the Indian government over their long-running $2.6bn tax dispute, Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has suffered a major setback in its own $1.1bn tax dispute in India, putting a halt to the transfer of its assets to Microsoft and prompting Nokia to launch an appeal to India’s Supreme Court.
This follows the apparent reprieve that Nokia seemed to have won late last year, when a court in New Delhi ruled that Nokia could transfer its Chennai-based factory to Microsoft as part of the €5.4bn sale of its phone business. The factory in Chennai, which is Nokia’s main manufacturing facility and employs around 30,000, was subject to a freeze by the tax authorities last year as part of the dispute. Last week, another court ruled that further conditions should be placed on the mobile phone company as part of the sale, which prompted the appeal to the Supreme Court.
In a statement, the company said that it ‘cannot commit to these conditions and waive its legal right to defend itself after undergoing more than a year of aggressive and arbitrary actions by the Indian tax authorities’.
The Financial Times has reported (12 February 2014) that, following the news of the collapse of talks between UK mobile phone giant Vodafone and the Indian government over their long-running $2.6bn tax dispute, Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has suffered a major setback in its own $1.1bn tax dispute in India, putting a halt to the transfer of its assets to Microsoft and prompting Nokia to launch an appeal to India’s Supreme Court.
This follows the apparent reprieve that Nokia seemed to have won late last year, when a court in New Delhi ruled that Nokia could transfer its Chennai-based factory to Microsoft as part of the €5.4bn sale of its phone business. The factory in Chennai, which is Nokia’s main manufacturing facility and employs around 30,000, was subject to a freeze by the tax authorities last year as part of the dispute. Last week, another court ruled that further conditions should be placed on the mobile phone company as part of the sale, which prompted the appeal to the Supreme Court.
In a statement, the company said that it ‘cannot commit to these conditions and waive its legal right to defend itself after undergoing more than a year of aggressive and arbitrary actions by the Indian tax authorities’.
