Anil Ambani, Fraud Allegations, and the Mysterious Loan Haircuts: A Saga of Corporate Loot and Bank Failures

On 30 June 2025, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani received a notice from the State Bank of India(SBI). The notice, prepared on 23 June 2025, conveyed SBI’s decision to classify the loan account of Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) as a fraud account and to report the names of the company and its former director, Anil Ambani, to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Ambani's reply, delivered through his advocate Tharuni Khurana, ends with these sentences: "The SBI has not given Ambani the opportunity of a personal hearing in the matter so that he could make a submission against the allegations. This is denial of natural justice." In short, Ambani seems to be asking, "Is it fair to call me a fraud just because I looted public money?"

Canara Bank, another public sector bank, had marked RCom’s account as fraudulent in November 2024. Strangely, on 10 July 2025—just 18 days after SBI also classified RCom as fraudulent—Canara Bank submitted an affidavit in court stating it had removed the fraudulent tag on Ambani’s company.

This cheating is of unimaginable magnitude, rivalling a crime novel.

RCom and Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, companies owned by Anil Ambani, took loans from SBI and various domestic and international banks in 2015. The loans were fully disbursed in 2016. The largest chunk, Rs. 3628.68 crores, was provided by SBI. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China disbursed Rs. 1832.91 crores. Other banks included Canara Bank, Union Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Subha Holdings, S C Lovi Asset Management, Doha Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Bank, China Development Bank, Exim Bank of China, and others.

Ambani fooled these institutions and pocketed public deposits worth Rs. 48,216 crores. The banks declared this amount as NPA in 2020. Further, SBI, having detected suspicious financial dealings, labeled his company as swindling in its records on 10 November 2020.

RBI norms for identifying a fraudulent loan include misuse of loans, criminal betrayal of faith, misappropriation using fake financial instruments, manipulation of books of accounts, illegal credit facilities, projecting artificial liquidity crises, forgery of records, and unlawful dealings involving foreign currency.

At that time, RBI regulations made it difficult to write off fraudulent loan accounts or classify them under haircuts. However, SBI suddenly revoked its classification of Anil Ambani's Reliance Infratel as fraudulent within 24 days, on 5 December 2020. The mandatory requirement of informing the Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) of a fraudulent account was also not fulfilled. After removal of the fraudulent tag, Reliance Infratel was put up for auction under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Infrastructure acquired Reliance Infratel in the auction. Banks recovered only a negligible portion of their loans after a haircut of 99%.

Opportunity to Play the China Blame Game

As noted, Ambani’s companies had loans from three Chinese banks: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Development Bank, and Exim Bank of China. When the loans turned NPAs, the Chinese banks filed cases in a UK court for recovery. Despite Ambani’s arguments, the London court ordered payment of 717 million USD (around Rs. 5448 crores) to the Chinese banks.

Ambani appeared in court via video conferencing and made unusual claims: he stated he was bankrupt and his expenses were met by his wife and family, that he had taken loans from his son Anmol Ambani, and that he had sold all his ornaments for Rs. 9 crores to pay legal expenses, leaving nothing valuable.

In a twist, the Delhi High Court sent notices on 12 October 2020 to the Chinese banks seeking their opinion on a plea filed by Ambani to include them in a challenge to a separate bankruptcy case against him in India. This, along with Ambani’s 2019 bankruptcy affidavit, adds complexity. Whether Sangh Parivar patriots will blame communist China for Ambani’s economic woes remains to be seen.

Scrutiny of Ambani’s arguments in the UK court, the SBI’s classification of his loan as fraudulent without hearing him, and Canara Bank’s sudden removal of the fraud tag raises doubts whether these were pre-scripted and well-planned dramas.

The picture is clear but strange

Now let us examine the crux of the Anil Ambani loan saga.

Is there anything unusual in the sequence of events above? The objectives behind these strange actions seem obvious. Why were companies removed from the fraudulent list and handed to a new owner after huge haircuts in 2020, only for Ambani to be classified as dishonest again now? Why did central authorities fail to identify Ambani’s alleged swindling earlier?

Bankrupt boss who owns an aircraft company

The Reliance Aerostructure Ltd (RAL) founded by Anil Ambani and the France headquartered Dassault Aviation Company have formed a joint venture, Dassault Reliance Aerospace Company at Nagpur and commenced production of Falcon Series of Jet aircrafts there. The details of the banks that have disbursed loans to this company will come out only in the distant future.

The deal to procure Raffel war planes from Dassault company struck during the visit of the Indian prime minister to France in 2015 and the attempts to make Reliance Aerospace the Indian partner in the deal had become a big controversy at that time.

Initiate inquiry  on loan haircuts

All loan haircuts under the IBC (passed in 2016) should be scrutinized. Many more stories of public money plundered from banks will emerge. Such demands should come from inside and outside Parliament.

Recently, videos of Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi—who fled the country after looting banks of tens of crores—celebrating luxuriously, went viral. They were heard singing Frank Sinatra’s “Now the End Is Near.”

Examining Ambani’s reply to SBI’s fraud classification notice makes one recall lines from the Malayalam poet Ayyappa Panikker’s poem Theft, which corporate bosses like Mallya, Modi, and Ambani might as well sing today. The last lines run:

"Change your rules,
That simply labels one,
A thief for stealing,
Something worthful,
Change the rules,
Lest they will change yourselves."

( The author is the President of Bank Employees Federation of India)