MTN SUFFERS ANOTHER GREAT LOSS AGAIN.

HIGH COURT AWARDS EZEEMONEY LIMITED DAMAGES AGAINST MTN UGANDA IN GROUND BREAKING COMPETITION CASE
EzeeMoney (U) Limited was established on the 9th August 2012 to provide Mobile Financial Services. An affiliate of Mobile Money International based in Malaysia, EzeeMoney set out to make the lives of Ugandans much easier by making mobile payments for goods and services as easy as possible and widely available as possible.
On starting up, EzeeMoney signed up with MTN Uganda Limited, a licensed telecom services provider, for the provision of the telephone and data services it needed to carry out its business.  EzeeMoney also signed up the services of a local telecom services aggregator to ease its interface with all licensed telecom services providers. Lastly EzeeMoney went about recruiting hundreds of retail mobile payments agents across Uganda, all of whom were given EzeeMoney’s signage and GSM enabled point of sales (POS) machines to service customers.   
Shortly after the public launch of EzeeMoney’s business in January 2013 MTN Uganda Limited, perhaps perceiving EzeeMoney’s innovative offerings as a threat to its own Mobile Money product started taking hostile action against EzeeMoney; essentially trying to squeeze it out of the market and shut it down. In this campaign of hostile and underhanded action MTN Uganda Limited:
• Denied the use of EzeeMoney’s short code on its network;
• Threatened EzeeMoney’s aggregator with a complete denial of access to the dominant MTN network if the aggregator continued to work with EzeeMoney at all, causing the aggregator to the terminating the provision of services to EzeeMoney altogether in order to save its business;
• Cut off all of EzeeMoney’s call centre lines;
• Cut off all 300 data SIM cards that were being used in EzeeMoney’s GSM enabled POS machines; and
• Intimidated all agents who were also providing MTN Mobile Money into signing exclusivity agreements and, specifically, warned them against any dealings with EzeeMoney so as to essentially deny EzeeMoney access to the market.
• Harassed the agents to the extent of them being asked to write apology letters for dealing in EzeeMoney services before their MTN services were restored.
Frustrated and nearly brought to its knees by the hostile and anti-competitive acts of MTN Uganda Limited, EzeeMoney, the small startup company which had already created over 1000 jobs for young Ugandans, filed a suit in the Commercial Division of the High Court of Uganda. In the suit, EzeeMoney contended that MTN Uganda Limited’s actions were a breach of its duties under the provisions of the Uganda Communication Act 2013 as well as an unlawful interference with its contractual relationships with its aggregator and retail agents.
In a landmark judgment delivered on Friday the 6th October 2015, the Honourable Mr. Justice Henry Peter Adonyo of the Commercial Division of the High Court of Uganda, resolved all issues in favour of EzeeMoney and issued the following orders:
a) A declaration that the exclusivity agreements which the Mobile Money agents were compelled to sign with MTN Uganda Limited infringe section 53(1)(b) of the Communications Act 2013 and are therefore null and void;
b) A permanent injunction prohibiting MTN Uganda Limited from acting in an unlawful and anti-competitive manner as against EzeeMoney;
c) A permanent injunction restraining MTN Uganda Limited from inducing any third parties to breach their contracts with EzeeMoney;
d) An award of Ug. Shs. 800,000,000/= (Eight Hundred Million Uganda Shillings), being general damages for loss of business arising from MTN Uganda Limited’s anti-competitive actions;
e) An award of Ug. Shs. 1,500,000,000/= (One Billion Five Hundred Million Uganda Shillings), being punitive damages against MTN Uganda Limited, to act as a deterrent to MTN Uganda Limited and other entities with similar anti-competitive conduct to stand warned that courts will not tolerate illegality and highhandedness in the conduct of business in Uganda;
f) Interest on (d) and (e) above at court rate from the date of judgment until payment in full; and
g) Costs of the suit.
Clearly the laws of Uganda protect small players from abusive and predatory anti-competitive behaviour and there is now an injunction prohibiting MTN Uganda Limited from unlawfully interfering with EzeeMoney’s business and business relationships. EzeeMoney expects MTN Uganda Limited to respect and comply with the lawful orders of the High Court of Uganda.
Justice has been served and the management of EzeeMoney pledges to continue providing innovative services to the people of Uganda and to do even better now that the unlawful impediments in its way have been lifted.