India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) provisionally attached assets worth Rs 510.17 crore (about Rs 5.10 billion) in cases involving three Reliance Anil Ambani Group companies, bringing the group’s reported attached-or-seized total to about Rs 23,100 crore on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
The ED’s reported inventory for the Reliance Communications Ltd. matter includes two chartered aircraft, six land parcels and office premises in Maharashtra. A separate attachment involving Reliance Home Finance Ltd. and Reliance Commercial Finance Ltd. covers two windmills in Tamil Nadu, along with bank balances, fixed deposits, investments and receivables.
The agency described the roughly Rs 23,100 crore figure as a cumulative total across several matters involving the group. It includes assets attached and seized to date under cases pursued through the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), rather than only the assets in Tuesday’s action.
The ED said its PMLA inquiry followed first information reports (FIRs) registered in Delhi by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and by Economic Offences Wings in Delhi and Mumbai. The broader investigation also names Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., Reliance Power Ltd. and Reliance Capital Ltd., in addition to the three companies tied to the new attachment.
The agency alleges that public funds from banks and financial institutions were diverted, and that insolvency law was used to ring-fence corporate assets for personal use. It also alleges that funds were moved from India to offshore tax havens and that a large share benefited the promoters and their families.
Across its investigations, the ED reported 10 arrests, six prosecution complaints under the PMLA and one complaint under the FEMA.
