Sportpesa CEO Ronald Karauri. FILE PHOTO | NMG Executives of telecoms company Airtel have launched a fight against contempt of court charges which put them at risk of fines or jail terms after the mobile operator was sucked into a dispute between the State and betting firm, SportPesa.
The mobile operator is seeking protection against a contempt suit filed by the betting firm which has accused it of failing to unblock gaming pay bill accounts and short codes used by its partner Milestones Games Limited despite a court order to do so.
The dispute kicked off last year after the State-run Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB) stopped Milestone from operating under the popular Sportpesa gaming brand, saying the trade name had been appropriated from its rightful owner Pevans East Africa Limited.
The regulator also prohibited Milstones from using the short codes 29050 and 79079, pay bill numbers 521521, 9555700 and 955700.
Milestone challenged the decision and on December 3, 2020 obtained a court order allowing it to continue operating.
BCLB officials and Airtel, however, refused reactivate the short codes and paybill numbers—prompting the betting firm to return to court to press for contempt charges.
Airtel in its defence, however, said as a regulated entity it had an obligation to comply with directives of the regulator, unless served with a court order suspending the directive.
Airtel’s legal manager, Lillian Mugo, revealed that on November 3, 2020, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) and the BCLB wrote to the mobile phone operator, directing it to terminate the short codes/USSD codes and pay bill numbers issued to Pevans due to compliance issues pending conclusion of investigations.
The mobile operator said the deactivated short codes and paybill numbers were issued to Pevans and could not be transferred to Milestone.
“That in compliance with the said directive, Airtel did suspend all its services as offered to Pevans Ltd which included the contracts, short codes/USSD codes and paybill numbers in favour of Pevans Ltd, which suspension still stands to date,” Ms Mugo said.
The CA, she said, also told Airtel to desist from reactivating the short codes and the paybill numbers earlier assigned to Pevans, until advised to do so.Milestone moved to court seeking to have BCLB chairman Cyrus Maina and six other board members jailed for contempt of court. The betting company also wanted Airtel, Safaricom and CA officials jailed for contempt.“To preserve the dignity of court and inviolability of the judicial process […]
