OREANDA-NEWS. October 05, 2010. Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (“MTS” – NYSE: MBT), the leading telecommunications provider in Russia and the CIS, announces that COMSTAR – United TeleSystems JSC (“Comstar” – LSE: CMST), a majority-owned subsidiary of MTS, and OJSC Rostelecom (“Rostelecom”) have completed a series of transactions involving the sale by the Comstar group of companies to Rostelecom of the 25%+1 share in the charter capital of Telecommunication Investment Joint Stock Company (“Svyazinvest”). In conjunction with these transactions, Rostelecom transferred RUB 26 billion to the Comstar group of companies.

Specifically, Rostelecom acquired 17.31% of the charter capital in Svyazinvest for RUB 18 billion from Comstar and 7.69% from MGTS Finance S.A., a company controlled by Comstar, for RUB 8 billion.

The proceeds from the sale were used by Comstar to pay off its debt obligations to Sberbank ahead of schedule.

As reported previously, the final completion of the transactions is subject to a number of conditions, one of which is closing the transaction to swap Svyazinvest’s stake in the Public Joint Stock Company Moscow City Telephone Network for the Sistema-Inventure CJSC, a subsidiary of JSFC Sistema (LSE: SSA), stake in SkyLink CJSC.