en.Wedoany.com Reported - Russian telecom company Rostelecom has completed the sale of its Armenian subsidiary GNC-Alfa to Fedilco Group, a Cypriot offshore company and owner of local mobile operator Viva-Armenia. Negotiations for this deal spanned nearly a decade, with a final agreement reached recently.
According to Interfax, Fedilco Group acquired the local telecom operator GNC-Alfa, previously owned by Rostelecom. The transaction amount was not officially disclosed, but in the summer of 2025, when the Armenian Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) granted Viva-Armenia a license to acquire 100% of GNC-Alfa's shares, the company's General Director Boris Demirkhanyan stated the deal was worth $40 million.
Rostelecom acquired 75% of GNC-Alfa's shares for $22 million in 2012, later increasing its stake to 100%. GNC-Alfa, a backbone telecom operator providing broadband internet access (BBA) and IP television services under the Ovio brand, was Rostelecom's only overseas asset. The company began negotiations to sell the asset in 2017, during which it engaged with Veon, MTS (Mobile TeleSystems), and Molitro Holdings, a Cypriot offshore company owned by Armenian-Russian businessmen Arman Unaian and Samvel Karapetyan.
In recent years, Russian investors have been gradually exiting the Armenian telecom market. Veon sold Veon Armenia to telecom company Team for $50 million in 2020. MTS sold K-Telecom to Fedilco Group for $209 million in 2023; at the time, the company was owned by entrepreneur Zhe Zhang and Russian businessman Konstantin Sokolov. Following the transaction, Viva-MTS was renamed Viva-Armenia, and Fedilco Group transferred 20% of the company's shares to the Armenian government free of charge.
According to reports, Konstantin Sokolov's several projects in St. Petersburg were unsuccessful. He previously owned the St. Petersburg machinery plant "Compressor Complex (Kompressorny Kompleks)" through the Cypriot offshore company Prosparon Investments. Subsequently, Canadian company Wastendo first filed a lawsuit due to failed investments in Prosparon Investments, after which the asset came under the ownership of Russia's Sberbank and went bankrupt. In 2010, Sokolov's company IFG-Basis-Project acquired the historic St. Petersburg building—the former residence of prominent Russian Imperial banker Mikhail Vavelberg—for 110 million rubles, with plans to convert it into a hotel complex. However, that building also eventually came under Sberbank's ownership, and later, entrepreneur Nikolay Buynov's organization successfully opened the Wawelberg Hotel there.
