November 17, 2004

Whale Telecom Ltd., a Russian company, is seeking more than $400 million in punitive and compensatory damages, in a breach-of-contract lawsuit against wireless company Qualcomm.

Also joined in the lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court are two Russians, Anthony Georgiou and Alexander Molozanov.

The company wants Qualcomm to pay more than $100 million in compensation and at least three times that amount in punitive damages.

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Whale Telecom claims that Qualcomm abandoned its contract with the Russian firm and pursued the same deal with another firm set up by Georgiou, a former Qualcomm employee.

Whale Telecom said it was "elbowed out and driven out of business, falsely being led to believe that the project was dead."

The company claimed Georgiou paid a fee of $1 million to a Russian government official to secure a government license to execute a separate project.

"We trusted Qualcomm's representations to us," said Dimitry Sychev, a founder of Whale Telecom, adding "we later discovered that after they had obtained the assistance they needed from us, they pushed us out of the project despite the exclusive contract we had. As a result, our company could not survive."

Source: RCR News