Mumbai – Industrialist Anil Ambani suffered a setback on Friday as the Bombay High Court dismissed his plea challenging the State Bank of India’s move to classify his loan account as “fraud.”
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Neela Gokhale rejected Ambani’s contention of procedural unfairness and arbitrariness, holding that SBI had acted in line with the RBI’s July 2024 Master Directions on fraud classification.
The bank had in June 2025 tagged the loan accounts of Reliance Communications (RCom) and its former promoter Anil Ambani as fraudulent, citing diversion of funds, violation of covenants, and related-party transactions. Following this, SBI also referred the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Ambani argued that he was only a non-executive director of RCom and had been unfairly targeted, claiming he was not given a fair opportunity to present his defence. The court, however, found no merit in his submissions.
This comes after Bank of Baroda too, in an exchange filing earlier this month, declared the loan accounts of RCom and Ambani as “fraud,” noting that the loans in question were taken prior to the company’s entry into the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP).
Currently, RCom is under the management of resolution professional Anish Niranjan Nanavaty, with Anil Ambani no longer serving as a director.
With inputs from IANS