ED attaches assets of Anil Ambani worth Rs 1,800 crore

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday said it has attached fresh assets worth more than Rs 1,800 crore as part of its ongoing money laundering investigation against the companies of Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani. With the latest action, the total value of the attachment by the federal probe agency in the case now stands at about Rs 12,000 crore. 

The ED said in a statement that it has issued four separate provisional orders in this context under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The attached properties include bank deposits, shareholding in unquoted investments and some immovable properties, it said.

The attachments have been done in the cases related to Reliance Home Finance Ltd (RHFL), Reliance Commercial Finance Ltd (RCFL), Yes Bank “fraud”, as well as an alleged fraud involving Reliance Communication Ltd. The fresh attachment includes shareholding of Reliance Infrastructure in BSES Yamuna Power, BSES Rajdhani Power, and Mumbai Metro One Private, the agency said. “Bank deposits of Rs 148 crore and receivable worth Rs 143 crore have been provisionally attached, which were in the hands of Value Corp Finance and Securities Limited,” it said.

A residential house in the name of senior company executive Angarai Sethuraman and shares and mutual funds of the wife of another senior employee, Puneet Garg, have also been attached, the ED said. The total value under the attachment is Rs 1,885 crore, the agency said. The Anil Ambani group companies have denied any wrongdoing in the past. The agency said it has detected “fraudulent diversion” of public money by various Reliance Anil Ambani group companies, including Reliance Communications (RCom), RHFL, RCFL, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RIL) and Reliance Power Ltd (RPL).

During 2017-2019, Yes Bank invested Rs 2,965 crore in RHFL instruments and Rs 2,045 crore in RCFL, it said. By December 2019, these became “non-performing” investments and the outstanding was Rs 1,353.50 crore for RHFL and Rs 1,984 crore for RCFL. RHFL and RCFL received public funds of more than Rs 11,000 crore, as per the ED.

“Before Yes Bank invested this money in Reliance Anil Ambani group companies, Yes Bank had received huge funds from the erstwhile Reliance Nippon Mutual Fund,” it said. As per SEBI regulations, the Reliance Nippon mutual fund could not invest funds directly in Anil Ambani group companies due to conflict-of-interest rules, the ED said.

Therefore, public money in mutual fund schemes was routed indirectly by them. The path ran through Yes Bank’s exposures, it alleged. The agency added that it is also investigating RCom, Anil Ambani and others after taking cognisance of a CBI FIR.

RCom and its group companies availed loans from domestic and foreign lenders from 2010 - 2012 onwards, of which a total amount of Rs 40,185 crore is outstanding.

Nine banks have declared the loan accounts of the group as fraud, the ED claimed. “RCom and its group companies diverted over Rs 13,600 crore for evergreening of loans, over Rs 12,600 crore was diverted to connected parties and over Rs 1,800 crore was invested in FDs/MFs etc., which was substantially liquidated for rerouting to group entities.

“Huge misuse of bill discounting for the purpose of funnelling funds to connected parties has also been detected by ED,” the agency said. Certain loans were “siphoned off” outside India through foreign outward remittances, said the ED.