The Supreme Court has dismissed the petition filed by Anil Ambani to order stay on the classification of his loan accounts as “fraudulent” by the Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank Ltd and the IDBI Bank Ltd.
Recently, these Banks had classified the account of Anil Ambani as Fraud.
Ambani approached the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court Division Bench’s February 23 order, which vacated the stay granted by the Single Bench on the fraud classification of his bank accounts.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal said that the Banks should not have classified the account as Fraud. Classification of Accounts as Fraud has defamed Anil Ambani.
Sibal said that the criminal investigation can go on in parallel, but the fraud classification must be interfered with as it was bad in law. Sibal contended that there was no proper audit of accounts before the fraud classification, and that the audit carried out by BDO LLP was not an audit meeting the statutory norms, as the entity was not qualified in terms of the RBI’s Master Directions 2024.
Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, however, refuted the argument and asserted that the report was given by a reputed auditor having global recognition.
Sibal, on the other hand, claimed that BDO was not an auditor. “Show where he is an auditor. He is not a CA! He is himself saying that I am not a CA/auditor,” Sibal said.
The Chief Justice of India however pointed out that the investigations by the CBI and the ED were proceeding against Anil Ambani over alleged siphoning off of funds.
Senior Advocate Shyam Divan appeared for Anil Ambani in the petition filed against the Indian Overseas Bank and Senior Advocate Narender Hooda appeared for Ambani in the petition filed against IDBI Bank Ltd.
They also questioned the report by BDO LLP and termed it invalid. They said that BDO was appointed in 2019 to examine the accounts for the period of four years from 2015, but the audit was carried out from 2013. He also contended that no notice was given to the petitioner when the auditor was appointed. He also reiterated that there is no finding of fraud in the BDO report.
But the bench was not persuaded to interfere. “It’s a case of siphoning of…we can’t really express any opinion as we don’t want to prejudice…if the hard-earned money…1000s of crores of taxpayer hard-earned money alleged to be siphoned…Has the loss been made good?” CJI Surya Kant asked.
With this, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition.
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