Industrialist Anil Ambani has taken his battle with the State Bank of India (SBI) to the Supreme Court, challenging a Bombay high court order that upheld the bank’s decision to classify his and Reliance Communications’ accounts as fraud.
The petition is yet to be listed for hearing, but it marks the latest turn in a dispute that has been building for more than a year.
The Bombay high court had on October 3 dismissed Ambani’s plea, observing that “there was no merit in the plea.”
Ambani had argued that SBI’s move lacked procedural fairness, insisting that the bank had “not followed the principles of natural justice” because he was not granted a hearing before the classification.
According to his petition, certain documents that formed the basis of the fraud tag were withheld initially and shared with him “only after six months.” These were the very records, he claimed, that shaped SBI’s conclusion on misappropriation of funds.
SBI had last year classified the accounts as fraud after alleging that Reliance Communications had entered into transactions violating loan terms.
The bank subsequently lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which then searched premises linked to Reliance Communications as well as Ambani’s residence.
In its complaint, the CBI stated that it had registered a case based on SBI’s claim of a loss of “Rs 2,929.05 crore” arising from alleged misappropriation by Reliance Communications and Ambani.