The long-running saga over control of VimpelCom looks set to continue with Russia’s Altimo buying up another batch of shares to push its stake higher than the group’s other major shareholder, Norway’s Telenor.

Reuters reports that Altimo – controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman – acquired 123.6 million additional VimpelCom shares from a holding firm known as Bertofan, increasing its stake by 6 percent to 47.85 percent. Telenor currently owns 43 percent.

"We hope that this deal will remove the question of foreign shareholder control in VimpelCom and will be a key in solving the conflict between [FAS, Russia’s anti-monopoly regulator] and Telenor," said Altimo.

Earlier this year, FAS had taken legal action against Telenor over its then-majority stake in VimpelCom, prompting a Moscow court to issue an injunction preventing VimpelCom from paying dividends.

Although VimpelCom is headquartered in Amsterdam, its Russian unit generates 40 percent of group sales and is considered a strategic Russian asset, meaning it is up to the government to decide whether a foreign investor (such as Telenor) may raise its stake above a 25 percent threshold.

While the two firms had subsequently attempted to achieve equal shareholdings, Altimo’s latest purchase of shares appears to have taken the Norwegian group by surprise.

"For us this [deal] is not great news," Telenor spokesman Dag Melgaard told Reuters. "Our proposition was that we should split these shares in a way that made our respective stakes in VimpelCom equal."