Bloomberg News reports that Zain Iraq has had its funds seized in all Iraqi banks until it pays a US$262 million fine for selling five million SIM cards without permission, Iraq’s telecommunications regulator said.

“We have warned them to pay the fine,” Ahmad Al Omari, a member of the Communications and Media Commission’s trustee board, said. “This procedure has been carried out as a punishment.”

The commission said on its website in February 2011 that the fine was imposed on Zain for putting five million SIM cards on the local market without permission. Zain Group said at the time that it did not know why Iraq’s media and telecommunications regulator had imposed the fine.

Zain Group and Vodafone Group today jointly announced a Partner Market agreement that will provide Zain customers with greater support in Vodafone’s global footprint and expand Vodafone’s Partner Market presence in the Middle East.

Under the non-equity partnership agreement, Vodafone will work with Zain companies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq to provide customers with high quality communications services. The move will enhance both Zain and Vodafone’s ability to meet growing demand among multinational businesses for sophisticated voice and data communications solutions as well as advanced roaming services within the Middle East. This will complement Vodafone’s own regional operations in Egypt and Qatar and increase the number of countries in which Vodafone has Partner Market agreements to more than 50.

Zain will have access to Vodafone’s devices and services in its home markets and become the preferred partner of Vodafone in respect of the agreed areas of cooperation. Zain and Vodafone will  work together to provide customers with enhanced network coverage, harmonised roaming rates across multiple countries with greater cost efficiencies and Zain will be able to use the Vodafone brand.

Vodafone’s multinational customers served by Vodafone Global Enterprise will benefit by being able to add the Zain countries to their existing contracts for international managed services, while continuing to be serviced via a single point of contact. Zain will similarly benefit from Vodafone’s footprint. In addition, Vodafone plans to support multinational corporations by providing communications expenditure tracking and procurement services while introducing innovative mobile price plans across the two organisations’ shared area of operations.

Egyptian mobile network, Mobinil says that it has signed a deal for an EGP2.9 billion (US$466 million) consolidated loan to repay some of its existing debts and fund network expansion.

In a statement to the stock exchange, the company said that a banking consortium consists of National Bank of Egypt, Commercial International Bank Egypt, HSBC, and National Societe Generale Bank.

The cellco was recently taken over by France Telecom following a long running dispute with the other main shareholder, Orascom Telecom.

The Egyptian government announced plans to award a fourth mobile licence to the state-owned Telecom Egypt, which also owns a 44 per cent stake in Vodafone’s local subsidiary. The move was criticised by Mobinil’s deputy chairman who said it was a move by the state to strangle private companies.

Zain Group has announced an executive management reshuffle aimed at further streamlining the company’s operations and re-energising its drive to remain ahead of competitors.

In the latest set of changes, a number of new administrative positions have been created including that of Group Deputy CEO, to which Hisham Akbar has been appointed, in addition to his new role as Zain Group’s Chief Operating Officer. Saud Al Zaid has been appointed the Group’s Chief Corporate Relations Officer, while Osama Matta has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer. Antonio Lopez becomes Chief Strategies and Business Development Officer, Hisham Allam has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer, and Jawdat Dajani as Chief Commercial Officer.

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is close to selling its Business Support Systems division, according to Bloomberg sources, with US-based Amdocs and private equity firms having shown interest. The division helps operators manage their billing systems and could fetch as much as €300 million (US$375 million), the sources said.

NSN has sold a number of its businesses as part of a restructure aimed at making it into a mobile broadband specialist. Speaking at Mobile World Congress in February, CEO Rajeev Suri said he wanted the company to become the industry’s leading player in the sector.

In the past year, NSN has sold its WiMAX unit to NewNet Communication Technologies, its Expedience proprietary fixed wireless broadband business to CN Tetragen, its fixed line broadband access unit to Adtran and microwave transport business to DragonWave.

The business restructure accompanied an announcement in November last year that the company was planning to cut 17,000 jobs and €1 billion in costs by the end of 2013 in response to economic pressures that have seen spending on mobile network infrastructure decline.