Anil Ambani’s ₹4,000 Crore Scam: ED Raids, SBI Fraud Tag, and a Battle for Survival

It was the kind of Mumbai morning that whispered of power: the sea breeze carried the scent of salt and ambition, and in a corner office high above Marine Drive, two titans of modern India met under the gleam of chandeliers and mutual desperation.

Anil Ambani, the younger son of the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani, sat across from Rana Kapoor, founder of Yes Bank — India’s then-rising financial star. The year was 2018. The stakes? Nothing less than survival.

For Anil, it was about staving off collapse. His once-mighty Reliance Group — built in the aftermath of a family split that divided the Reliance empire between him and elder brother Mukesh Ambani — was cracking under the weight of unsustainable debt and failed ventures. Telecom had turned into a graveyard, power projects had stalled, and lenders were losing faith.

Rana, meanwhile, was playing a different game. His Yes Bank was the poster child of aggressive lending, and he fancied himself as India’s financial kingmaker — always ready to back a bet, especially when others hesitated.

That morning, there were no envelopes of cash exchanged, no overt promises. Just talk — of “strategic partnerships,” “visionary growth,” and “unlocking value.” But what allegedly followed was a masterclass in modern financial deception.

The Pact and the Payback

Within weeks of that meeting, Yes Bank opened its vaults. Over ₹4,000 crore in loans flowed into companies linked to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group — entities already under financial stress, some teetering on insolvency. Internal red flags at Yes Bank were raised but quickly buried. Risk officers were sidelined. Paperwork was expedited.

At first, it looked like a lifeline.

But behind the scenes, investigators now allege, another stream of money began flowing — in reverse. Not directly, but through a complex web of shell companies and obscure investments. One such firm, registered to a nondescript Mumbai address with barely any staff, suddenly received large “investments.” This firm, it turns out, was secretly owned by Rana Kapoor’s daughters.

This wasn’t a loan repayment. It was, investigators suspect, a “return gift” — a kickback masked as an equity infusion.

For a while, the system worked — until it didn’t.

Collapse and Consequences

The loans soon soured. Reliance Communications (RCom) defaulted, dragging Yes Bank’s balance sheet into a death spiral. When Yes Bank collapsed in early 2020, the true scale of the rot became clear. What followed was one of India’s biggest banking crises — a house of cards built on friendly loans, political connections, and backdoor deals.

Fast forward to July 2025. Anil Ambani’s name is once again splashed across headlines — not for boardroom deals, but for Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids at his offices and homes. The agency, acting on fresh leads from the ongoing Yes Bank–DHFL money laundering probe, is now retracing the flow of funds — from Yes Bank to Reliance, and back again.

This time, the focus is not just on Rana Kapoor, who is already behind bars. It’s on Anil Ambani — the recipient of the loans, and allegedly, a key player in the financial merry-go-round that left India’s banking system bruised.

A Fall from Grace

To understand the gravity of the moment, one must rewind to the early 2000s.

Anil Ambani was once the golden boy of Indian business — suave, articulate, and a fixture in power circles. His companies attracted billions in investment, his speeches drew standing ovations, and for a while, he even dabbled in politics. Forbes listed him among the world’s richest.

But by the late 2010s, the sheen had worn off. Telecom wars with Mukesh had ended badly. Infrastructure dreams got tangled in bureaucracy and debt. Films, power, finance — each foray became another financial sinkhole.

And yet, the Reliance Group never truly disappeared. Even today, companies like Reliance Power and Reliance Infrastructure remain operational. In fact, they’ve tried to pivot — investing in renewable energy, exploring defense manufacturing, and setting up a Corporate Centre to guide strategic revival. But the shadow of past deals looms large.

Adding to the gloom, India’s largest lender, SBI, has now classified RCom and Anil Ambani himself as “fraudulent borrowers” under RBI guidelines, with plans to escalate the matter to the CBI. Reliance Capital, another group entity, has been acquired by IndusInd International Holdings Ltd after a three-year-long insolvency battle — ending one of corporate India’s most dramatic resolution sagas.

“As a business journalist in Mumbai between 1999 and 2004, I met Anil Ambani several times. For some reason, he seemed to have a certain liking for me. He was a charismatic tycoon, and I was a young reporter. But during our interactions and interviews, I always sensed something — he wasn’t just ambitious, he was restless. It felt like he didn’t want to build slowly, he wanted to fly fast. Maybe he was more of a speculator than a builder.”
— Manoj Singh, Editor, TICE News

What's The Endgame?

Is this the end for Anil Ambani? Perhaps not.

He has survived public trials before — legal, financial, and reputational. But the ED’s current focus is different. It isn’t just about bad loans; it’s about intent, about what happened behind the polished facades of corporate boardrooms.

In a country where the wheels of justice often turn slowly, this probe represents a wider reckoning — for a generation of businessmen who borrowed freely, invested ambitiously, and, some say, bet on their proximity to power rather than prudence.

Anil Ambani may never return to the heights of his early success. But in India’s evolving financial landscape — one increasingly intolerant of corporate excess and opaque dealings — his story is becoming a cautionary tale.

It’s a tale of ambition unmoored from reality. Of partnerships built on promises, not performance. And of how the dance between banks and billionaires, once seen as India’s growth engine, became its greatest risk.

As investigators dig deeper, one question lingers: How many more hidden pacts lie buried beneath the ruins of ambition?

Disclaimer: All inputs, insights, and narrative references in this article are derived from a public LinkedIn post authored by Jayant Mundhra. Jayant is followed by 30,000+ investors on WhatsApp for his financial insights. He is an Ex-Bain consultant, former Classplus executive, and the author of Redemption of a Son.