The Anil Ambani versus SBI battle over outstanding loans is intensifying, with the state-run lender taking the industrialist to task, as it were. Already, the SBI re-classified his loan account as a ‘fraud’, sparking off an intense reaction from the industrialist.

Escalation of the protracted fight between the two, lingering on as a corporate and legal battle which now has turned into a no-holds-barred fight after SBI declared its intent to report the company loan issue to the RBI. The public sector bank has written a letter to the company accusing it of “fraud”, which industrialist Anil Ambani contested and demanded the accusations be withdrawn.

Anil Ambani’s legal team, comprising a battery of lawyers, questioned SBI’s allegations and also its failure to answer the company’s questions for over a year. The bank also denied a chance to the company to explain its position and also to highlight the fact that Anil Ambani was a non-executive director at the company and was not responsible for its day-to-day work. His legal team said Ambani was shocked over the ex parte order of the Bank’s Fraud Identification Committee.

The big fight unfolded in the public domain after the company made a mandatory BSE filing, referring to the letter it received from the SBI. According to the filing, the Bank stated that it identified a deviation in the utilisation of the loans and also accused the company of not providing satisfactory responses to its questions regarding irregularities in the company’s operations.

In fact, the SBI had previously issued show-cause notices to the company earlier in December 2023, March 2024, and again in September 2024.