South Africa's competition watchdog said on Thursday it has charged a senior Vodacom executive with perjury, alleging that she misled the authority during its investigation into the company's proposed acquisition of Glocell. The charges were laid on Wednesday at Sunnyside Police Station in Pretoria.

The case relates to the 2007 acquisition of Global Telematics SA (Pty) Ltd. and Glocell Service Provider Company (Pty) Ltd. by one of Johannesburg-based Vodacom's units. Vodafone Group Plc and Telkom South Africa Ltd. each have a 50-per cent stake in Vodacom, South Africa's biggest mobile-phone company by subscribers.

The unnamed executive signed a certificate of accuracy on behalf of Vodacom during hearings by the Competition Commission on the acquisition of Glocell by Service Provider Company, a unit of Vodacom. The deal was given a nod by the watchdog in March.

The commission said the executive could face a penalty of 2,000 rand ($264.2) or six months in jail. However the executive would have faced a heavier fine under a proposed amended competition bill, currently being debated in parliament.

The commission said the executive lied about Vodacom's real strategic rationale for wanting to buy Glocell and the company failed to provide relevant documents.

The commission regarded the executive's explanation as a true and fair rationale for Vodacom's acquisition of Glocell. However, Vodacom later provided documents to a sister competition authority, the Competition Tribunal, showing the real strategic rationale for buying Glocell.

"We were made to believe that in fact the documents do not exist explaining the strategic rationale for the acquisition of Glocell," Tembinkosi Bonakele, head of the mergers and acquisition division at the commission, said.

''It was discussed at board level so Vodacom is responsible for this, but we went for the individual who signed on behalf of the company saying that the information was true and correct. So technically she becomes the fall guy,'' he added. ''We have looked carefully, and this is the only person we think we have the grounds to go after.''

The Tribunal approved the transaction but it said information was deliberately withheld from the commission.

"It is clear from Vodacom's documents that the transaction was intended to in fact take out a company that was providing competition and threatening its margins," said the commission.

Vodacom said it was not prepared to comment on the matter.

"We've referred this matter to our attorneys for their immediate attention. Due to the seriousness of this matter, Vodacom cannot comment further," Vodacom's spokeswoman, Dot Field said in a statement.

On December 20 last year, the commission received notification of a large merger between Vodacom service provider company (VSPC), a subsidiary of Vodacom and Global Telematics SA, and Glocell service provider company. In terms of the structure of the transaction, VSPC was to acquire the business of Glocell. As part of the merger filing the executive signed a certificate of accuracy on behalf of Vodacom declaring that the information submitted to the commission in respect of the merger was true and correct.

Upon completing its investigation the commission made a recommendation to the Competition Tribunal for an unconditional approval of the transaction.

At the hearing before the Tribunal on March 6, the tribunal requested Vodacom and Glocell to provide it with all board minutes relating to the acquisition of Glocell by Vodacom.

During its investigation of the transaction Vodacom had failed to provide the commission with these documents, despite requests for it to do so, and the commission was led to believe that these documents did not exist. However, after the tribunal ordered Vodacom to provide the documents, they were submitted on March 10.

At that time, Vodacom SA MD Shameel Joosub had said, ''We unequivocally deny we deliberately withheld information from either the commission or the tribunal, or made any attempt to mislead them. Whilst we must accept responsibility for submitting a document late, the document was nevertheless voluntarily submitted after Vodacom itself had discovered it.''

The matter was subsequently approved by the tribunal, but it expressed misgivings about Vodacom's truthfulness during the investigation of the transaction. The tribunal stated that it believed that the information was deliberately withheld from the commission. In particular, the tribunal noted that the strategic rationale, as contained in the board minutes of Vodacom, differed substantially with the rationale submitted to the commission.

The commission subsequently investigated the matter and found that the rationale for the transaction was to eliminate Glocell because it was providing discounts to customers in competition with Vodacom and other Vodacom service providers.

Contrary to this, the rationale submitted by Vodacom to the commission was primarily driven by the declining growth of the service provider market, and the desire by Vodacom to consolidate its service delivery chains in line with worldwide trends to have management over the delivery of a more uniform consistent service to its customers.

It is clear from Vodacom's documents that the transaction was intended to take out a company that was providing competition and threatening its margins, the commission says. Accordingly, the commission believes that grounds exist for referring this matter to the criminal prosecution authorities for charges.