Anil Ambani Assures Supreme Court He Won't Leave India Amid ED-CBI Probe Into Alleged ₹40,000 Crore ADAG Loan Fraud
Kirit Singhania
19 Feb 2026 10:34 AM IST
Industrialist Anil Ambani on February 18 filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court undertaking that he will not travel outside India without prior permission of the court and will fully cooperate with ongoing investigations by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into alleged irregularities involving companies of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG).
The affidavit was filed in response to a 2025 writ petition by former bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma seeking a court-monitored probe into alleged loan frauds exceeding Rs. 40,000 crore by ADAG entities led by Ambani.
In his affidavit, Ambani adopted the statement earlier made on his behalf by Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi before the Court on February 4. He stated that he has not travelled abroad since July 2025, when the present investigations began, and that he has no intention of leaving the country.
He further stated that he has been cooperating with the investigating agencies and will continue to do so. The affidavit discloses that he has been summoned by the ED to appear on February 26, 2026, and has undertaken to join the investigation on that date.
“That I have been summoned by the Directorate of Enforcement to appear on 26.02.2026 and I undertake to appear and join the investigation on the said date. I further undertake to fully cooperate with the authorities, while ensuring procedural clarity and preventing any suggestion of evasion or selective presentation of facts by the Petitioner.”, the affidavit states.
Background
On February 4, a bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi had expressed dissatisfaction over delays in the investigation and directed both the ED and the CBI to proceed in a time-bound manner. The court also directed the ED to constitute a Special Investigation Team and asked the CBI to register separate FIRs based on complaints from individual banks instead of relying solely on the FIR lodged on the complaint of the SBI.
The allegations relate to loans aggregating to over Rs.40,000 crore availed by companies of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group from a consortium of public sector and private banks. It is alleged that substantial portions of these funds were diverted through layered transactions, related-party dealings and inter corporate transfers, instead of being utilised for the stated business purposes.
SBI commissioned a forensic audit in or around 2020 to examine the end-use of funds and identify possible irregularities. The audit reportedly flagged instances of fund diversion, routing of monies through related entities and transactions inconsistent with the sanctioned purposes. Based on these findings complaints were lodged and investigative agencies were moved.
The writ petition filed by E.A.S. Sarma claims that certain loans were evergreened, restructured or sanctioned despite deteriorating financial indicators, resulting in large scale non-performing assets (NPAs). It has also alleged possible connivance or lapses on the part of bank officials in sanctioning and monitoring the credit facilities.