NEW DELHI — The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached over 132 acres of land valued at Rs 4,462.81 crore within Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the agency said in a statement on Monday.
The action is part of the ongoing investigation into alleged bank fraud cases involving Reliance Communications Ltd (RCOM), Reliance Commercial Finance Ltd, and Reliance Home Finance Ltd, all linked to the Anil Ambani Group. The ED had earlier attached 42 properties worth more than Rs 3,083 crore related to the same cases.
“With this, the total attachment in these cases stands at over Rs 7,545 crore. ED is actively pursuing perpetrators of financial crime and is committed to restituting the proceeds of crime to their rightful claimants,” the agency stated.
The investigation was initiated based on a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) FIR filed under sections 120-B, 406, and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, and section 13(2) read with section 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1989, against RCOM, Anil Ambani, and others.
According to the ED, RCOM and its associated companies obtained loans from domestic and international lenders between 2010 and 2012, with a total outstanding amount of Rs 40,185 crore. Five banks have since declared the group’s loan accounts as fraudulent.
The probe revealed that funds borrowed by one entity were used to repay loans of other group entities, transferred to related parties, and invested in mutual funds—actions that violated the terms of the sanctioned loans.
The ED’s findings indicate that RCOM and its group companies diverted over Rs 13,600 crore for evergreening loans, more than Rs 12,600 crore to connected parties, and over Rs 1,800 crore into fixed deposits and mutual funds, much of which was later liquidated and rerouted to group firms. Investigators also uncovered widespread misuse of bill discounting to funnel money to related parties, along with evidence of funds being siphoned abroad through foreign remittances.
Further investigation into the case is ongoing, the agency said. (Source: IANS)
