LIME To Pay Millions To Digicel

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC — Telecommunication company, LIME, is to pay more than J$1.5 billion (One Jamaica dollar =US$0.008 cents) to Digicel (Jamaica) Limited for wrongly withholding money, due for calls from LIME’s fixed-line customers to Digicel mobile phones,” the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper reported Tuesday.

It said, the payment is as a result of two lawsuits, filed by Digicel  in 2007 and 2009, against Lime, whose parent company is the British telecommunication giant, Cable & Wireless, over its refusal to hand over the funds.

LIME had denied that it was liable to refund Digicel and filed a counterclaim for more than J$600 million.

Justice Bryan Sykes, who heard the matters and, in July last year, ruled largely in favour of Digicel., said, that LIME had wrongly deducted hundreds of millions of dollars from money collected from its fixed-line customers.

He had ordered the registrar of the Supreme Court to carry out a “taking of accounts” to assess the sum that should be refunded to Digicel. He also dismissed LIME’s counterclaim.

On November 24, last year, the registrar determined that J$1.3 billion was owing in one of the actions and J$179.7 million in the other. The amount carried an interest of almost J$$250,000 daily from the date of the judgment in July last year.

The newspaper said that the two companies had appealed Justice Sykes’ ruling but the appeals were recently withdrawn.

The judge ordered that Digicel was entitled to interest at the Bank of Nova Scotia’s base lending rate plus interest of two percent. LIME was ordered to pay 70 per cent of Digicel’s legal costs, the Jamaica Gleaner reported.