The saga of Bermuda-incorporated Ipoc reached another milestone last week with a multi-billion dollar peace agreement being approved in the Bermuda Supreme Court.

That was an official legal endorsement of a settlement made in the summer in which Ipoc and the Alfa Group, which have been at loggerheads for a number of years over a disputed 25 percent stake in Russian mobile phone operator MegaFon, agreed to drop all proceedings against one another.

By making peace the road is now clear for Ipoc to sell its undisputed share in MegaFon - which amounts to 39.3 percent and is worth around $5.9 billion. Newspaper reports in Moscow claim that the most likely buyer is Alisher Usmanoc, a Russian metals tycoon.

The Ipoc story is not over yet. The Bermuda Government's move to wind up the fund and eight affiliated companies remains active and will rumble through the Island's courts from most of 2008.

In a separate legal move, prosecutors in the British Virgin Islands are reported to have launched a criminal probe in Ipoc's activities over claims that $40 million of court fees paid by the company were the "proceeds of crime."

Alfa's lawyers have claimed that Russia's telecommunications minister Leonid Reiman is the ultimate beneficial owner of Ipoc. Mr. Reiman has denied this claim, according to a report in the UK's Financial Times.