The Enforcement Directorate has issued fresh summons to Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani to appear before it on November 17 in a FEMA case after he skipped his scheduled date on Friday.
Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
ED sources said the agency rejected Ambani’s offer to depose through “virtual means”.
In a statement, a spokesperson of the 66-year-old businessman said he has written to the federal probe agency assuring “full cooperation” in the probe.
According to sources, the agency had asked Ambani to appear before it in person on Friday and get his statement recorded under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
The investigation pertains to the Jaipur-Reengus highway project.
In an earlier statement, the ED had said that after recently attaching assets worth Rs 7,500 crore belonging to Ambani and his companies under the anti-money laundering law, a search carried out against Reliance Infrastructure Ltd found that an alleged Rs 40 crore was “siphoned” from the highway project.
“Funds moved through Surat-based shell companies to Dubai.
“The trail has unearthed a wider international hawala network exceeding Rs 600 crore,” the agency had said.
The ED has recorded the statement of various persons, including some alleged hawala dealers, following which they decided to summon Ambani, the sources said.
Hawala denotes illegal movement of funds, largely in cash.
“The matter (FEMA case) is 15 years old, dates to 2010. It concerns issues associated with a road contractor,” the statement said.
In 2010, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd awarded an EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contract to build the JR Toll Road (Jaipur-Reengus highway), it said.
“This was a purely domestic contract with no foreign exchange component involved whatsoever.
“The JR Toll Road has been fully completed and, from 2021 onwards, has been with the National Highways Authority of India,” the statement said.
Ambani is not a member of the Board of Reliance Infrastructure.
“He served the company for about 15 years, from April 2007 to March 2022, only as a non-executive director, and was never involved in day-to-day management of the company,” it said.
The businessman has once been questioned by the ED in a money laundering case linked to an alleged Rs 17,000 crore worth bank fraud against his group companies.
