The Enforcement Directorate has registered a fresh case against industrialist Anil Ambani, Reliance Communications (RCom) and others in connection with an alleged loan fraud that is said to have caused a loss of ₹2,929 crore to the State Bank of India.
The latest case is based on an FIR registered by the CBI last month when the agency had carried out searches at Ambani’s Mumbai home and RCom premises.
“The ED has filed a fresh case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Anil Ambani, RCom and others for allegedly causing a loss of over ₹2,929 crore to SBI,” said an agency official.
It has been alleged that the accused persons had hatched a criminal conspiracy to get credit facilities from SBI sanctioned in favour of Reliance Communications Ltd. The allegations also pertain to misutilisation/ diversion of loan funds, potential routing of loan funds, inter-company loan transactions, misutilisation of sales invoice financing, and discounting of bills of RCom by Reliance Infratel Ltd.
In July, junior finance minister Pankaj Chaudhary had told Parliament that SBI had classified Reliance Communications and its promoter-director Anil Ambani as
“fraud” in accordance with RBI guidelines.
The ED had summoned Ambani and recorded his statement on August 5, days after sleuths raided 35 premises in Mumbai and Delhi linked to his companies in connection with another bank fraud case involving companies of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and Yes Bank.