Attempt by the Vodafone Group to sell its 51% stake in Vodacom Congo SPRL to MTN is facing two separate legal challenges from its partner, Congolese Wireless Network SPRL (CWN), and a former consultant. Bloomberg quoted Chairman and founder of CWN Alieu Conteh as saying its lawyers had filed an application in a Kinshasa court to stop the sale. CWN owns 49% of Vodacom Congo SPRL. Meanwhile, Moto Mabanga, a former consultant to the Vodacom Group and director of Namemco Energy (Pty) Limited, was also reported to have said he would halt any deal until he was paid a ‘success fee’ of $40.8 million for work he did for Vodacom in 2007 and 2008. “We’ll send a letter to all the main shareholders and we’ll block the sale,” Conteh told Bloomberg in Kinshasa, adding that the sale would be blocked until all avenues for dealing with internal disputes were exhausted. Spokesperson for Vodacom South Africa, Richard Boorman was also quoted as saying Vodacom had received court papers from CWN, but he declined to comment on the consultant’s settlement claim. Earlier reports attributed to two persons familiar with the deal, indicated the MTN Group, Africa’s largest mobile-phone company was seeking to buy Vodacom’s stake in the Congo venture. Angola’s Unitel SA is also said to be among the bidders, but Unitel’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer Amilcar Safeca declined to comment on the matter. Meanwhile Vodacom had agreed with CWN on December 22, 2010, to appoint London-based NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd. to “explore options” for its Congo unit. The process is still under way, Boorman said, and media reports in South Africa indicated at least four companies were bidding for the stake. MTN is the leading mobile telecom operator in Africa recording 150 million subscribers across its 22 operations, including Ghana, in June 2011. MTN is the market leader in Ghana with 9,894,074 subscribers representing 48.4% mobile market share and more than 40% of Ghana's populations. The company said it is poised to get 10 million subscribers by the close of this year.