Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 crore on Anmol Ambani, son of industrialist Anil Ambani, for not doing the proper diligence on the corporate loan approvals of Reliance Home Finance case. It has also slapped a penalty of Rs 15 lakh on Krishnan Gopalakrishnan, Chief Risk Officer of Reliance Housing Finance, for his role in the case.
Both have been directed to pay the amounts within 45 days, ruled Sebi. This is after Sebi had already banned Anil Ambani and 24 others for five years from the securities market for allegedly misusing funds of Reliance Home Finance Ltd., while levying a separate Rs 25 crore fine on Anil Ambani in August 2023.
Violating Board’s directive for Loan Approval
The same order reveals that the director on the board of Reliance Home Finance, Anmol Ambani, was fine with the general-purpose corporate loans (GPCL) when the board had categorically instructed management not to give any GPCL loans. In fact, he sanctioned a Rs 20 crore loan to Accura Productions Private Limited on February 14, 2019, when barely four days had passed after the board on February 11, 2019, had issued a clear directive to the management not to disburse any more GPCL loans.
Breach of Ethical Standards and Due Care
The regulator has pointed out that Anmol Ambani, while acting as a non-executive director, had crossed the line of duties by approving the loan thus putting the cause of shareholders in peril and violating the principles of ethical standards. The regulator perceived his behaviour to point towards personal motives instead of due care regarding the financial health of the company.
Moreover, Sebi charged that Anmol, other than being a member of the board of Reliance Capital and a few others of the Reliance ADAG groups, did not exercise due caution and diligence as far as GPCL advances and further loans to others in the ADAG group of companies, which included Reliance Capital, were concerned.
VI Violation of SEBI Regulations
Both Anmol Ambani and Krishnan Gopalakrishnan have been held to violate the provisions of the regulator’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) rules by Sebi, thus reinforcing the penalties and actions undertaken by the entity.
