The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday said it had provisionally attached industrialist Anil Ambani’s 17-storey Mumbai residence, Abode, worth ₹3,716.83 crore in connection with the alleged multiple bank fraud case involving his group company Reliance Communications.
With this, the total value of attached assets linked to the Reliance Anil Ambani Group has risen to around ₹15,700 crore.
Sources said a provisional attachment order had been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on the luxury property located in the posh Pali Hill area.
The ED had initiated a probe based on the CBI’s FIR against Reliance Communications (R-Com), Ambani and others. R-Com and its group companies took loans from domestic and foreign lenders, of which a total of ₹40,185 crore is outstanding, the central agency said.
“The ED investigation has revealed that, among other assets, the Pali Hill property was aggregated into the RiseE Trust — a private family trust of the members of Anil Ambani’s family. This was done to make it appear as though Anil Ambani is not involved,” the agency said.
The intended effect of this corporate restructuring, the ED said, was to ensure wealth preservation and resource generation by aggregation of the property in the RiseE trust and shield it from the personal liabilities of Ambani in the form of personal guarantees extended by him to lender banks against the loans sanctioned to R-Com.
“The property was intended to be beneficially used and owned by the Anil Ambani family and not for the distressed public banks whose loans turned NPA (non-
performing assets),” the agency said.
The case pertains to multiple bank frauds by Anil Ambani’s group companies — R-Com, Reliance Commercial Finance Limited and Reliance Home Finance Limited.