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Baksaas resigns from all Telenor boards

This means that Baksaas resigns as the chairman of Telenor Business Partner Invest and Telenor Mobile Holding, where he has retained the positions since August 2002. He he has also resigned as a director of Doorstep, owned partly by Telenor and DNB.

Baksaas previously resigned as CEO of Telenor in August this year after having been in this position for 13 years. Since then he has worked as an adviser for Telenor.

Monday morning the Telenor board and Jon Fredrik Baksaas have agreed on terminating the consulting agreement with Baksaas serving as strategic advisor. Baksaas is also denied any bonus payments for 2015, according to Telenor’s press release. He retains, however, its contractual share awards under the company’s long-term incentive scheme.

Former Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas acted as one of the main figures in the recent VimpelCom corruption scandal and has admitted that the information has been withheld in Vimpelcom case. He apologized in an interview with Dagens Næringsliv and told the newspaper that Telenor management and the board should have gone out with the information earlier, but that they have not realized the importance of this when he and another chairman Svein Aaser met in Parliament’s control and Constitutional Committee in January.

– The latest developments in the ongoing investigation of Vimpelcom has made my role as a strategic advisor to the Board of Telenor demanding. I have dedicated my career to Telenor and think this situation is very regrettable, complex and sad for the company. It is important that Telenor and Telenor’s board is given the opportunity to deal with the situation in the best possible way. I hope my decision will contribute to this. I want the best for Telenor and all company employees, said Jon Fredrik Baksaas today in Telenor’s press release.

Baksaas has even been one of the directors of VimpelCom, the company suspected of bribery in connection with the purchase of licenses in Uzbekistan. He became a member of the board of Vimpelcom in 2010, but resigned in December 2014, when the Dutch, Swiss and American investigators started the company’s investigation.

Vimpelcom is supposed to pay large sums to the company Takilant, which in turn is connected to the controversial Uzbekistan president’s daughter Gulnara Karimova.

In the same case another Vimpelcom CEO Jo Lunder was charged for corruption, after he was arrested at the Gardermoen airport last week. Telenor is a minority shareholder in Vimpelcom, which is now under international investigation for transfers of 700 million to a mailbox company in Gibraltar.

 

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