Anil Ambani misses ED summons in FEMA case

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.

ED sources said the agency rejected Ambani's offer to depose through “virtual means”.

The summons relates to alleged foreign exchange violations linked to the Jaipur-Reengus Highway Project, wherein the ED suspects that around Rs 100 crore was routed abroad through ‘hawala’ channels.

The agency had already questioned several individuals — including alleged ‘hawala’ operators — before calling Ambani for his statement, sources said.

Ambani was earlier examined by the ED in a separate money-laundering probe into an alleged Rs 17,000-crore bank fraud involving companies of the Reliance Group.

In a detailed statement, a spokesperson for Ambani said he had written to the ED expressing willingness to “fully cooperate on all matters”, and had offered to appear virtually.

The spokesperson emphasised that the ongoing inquiry was a FEMA case, “not a PMLA matter, as wrongly attributed by some media without diligence”.

Calling the case “15 years old”, the statement said it pertained to a 2010 EPC contract awarded by Reliance Infrastructure for the construction of the JR Toll Road on the Jaipur-Ringus stretch.

“This was a purely domestic contract with no foreign exchange component involved whatsoever,” it said, adding that the project had been completed, and has been under the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) since 2021.

The spokesperson also underlined that Ambani was not a member of Reliance Infrastructure’s board.

“He served the company from April 2007 to March 2022 only as a non-executive director and was never involved in day-to-day management,” the statement read.