TOT Plc on Thursday appealed to the Central Administrative Court to override February's arbitration-court judgement, which ruled in favour of True Corp Plc in the two companies' network-access dispute.

Prinya Visessiri, executive vice president for legal matters, said TOT was confident it had strong evidence to justify the appeal.

He said the appeal hinged on the fact that before Prasit Kovilaikul became the chairman of the arbitration court sitting in the TOT-True case he had been a director of Allianz CP General Insurance Co, a joint venture between Germany's Allianz AG and the Charoen Pokphand Group. The CP Group is True's major shareholder.

He said Prasit had informed TOT he was only an independent director and did not have a role in the joint venture's management, but TOT regards his directorship as a conflict of interest insofar as his deliberation on the TOT-True dispute is concerned. Prinya said the case of Prasit could be likened to parts of the recent ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court in the Egat case.

The court ruled last month to revoke two Royal Decrees supporting the energy enterprise's privatisation. In making its ruling, the court identified several people as having potential conflicts of interest in the privatisation process.

True vice chairman Athueck Asvanund said yesterday that he had yet to see TOT's appeal but that in the case of Prasit there was unlikely to be a conflict of interest, adding that Prasit was only an independent director of the insurance joint venture.

TOT's private telecom concessionaire True filed the case against the state agency in August

2002, claiming a share of the benefits gained by TOT from providing special services on True's network.

On February 17 this year the arbitration court ruled that with respect to lost revenues up to August 22, 2002, TOT had to pay True more than Bt9 billion, plus interest, within 60 days of the ruling.

The ruling said True was entitled to benefits derived from TOT's provision of special services on its network and from TOT's permission for others to provide special services on its network.

TOT must also pay True 50 per cent of the benefits gained by TOT from accessing True's network since August 22, 2002.

TOT was ordered to pay this compensation to True by yesterday. It therefore filed the appeal to the court on Thursday to avoid having to make the payment, even though the deadline for an appeal is May 21.

TOT also stated in its appeal that the arbitration court's ruling did not correspond to True's filing details, Prasit said.

True had stated in its filing that if TOT had to pay the network-access charge to its concessionaire the payment should be deducted from True's concession-fee payment to the agency. However, the arbitration court told TOT to pay True within 60 days of the ruling.

The appeal also said the arbitration court had no authority to work out the formula for the network-access charge compensation that TOT had to pay to True. Only the National Telecommunications Commission can do that, said Prinya.

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