During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Celcom's owner, Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli suffered a debt crunch, and his shareholding in Celcom was seized by Danaharta, the national asset restructuring company.
Owing to the inferior management of its former management Celcom was found liable by an arbitration panel in Switzerland for infringing an agreement signed with Deutsche Telekom AG's unit, DeTeAsia in 2002.