Embattled billionaire Anil Ambani on Monday warded off a possible jail term as RCom cleared dues of a Swedish service provider at the eleventh hour with money received from elder brother Mukesh, whom he thanked for standing by him in trying times and extending \u201ctimely support\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anil\u2019s heavily debt-laden Reliance Communications made a Rs 550-crore payment, including interest, to Ericsson just a day before expiry of the deadline set by the Supreme Court to clear dues or face a three-month jail term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anil said he and his family \u201care grateful\u201d and \u201cdeeply touched with this gesture\u201d that they \u201chave moved beyond the past\u201d.In the statement, RCom said Rs 550 crore dues to Ericsson, including interest dues, has been made in compliance with the Supreme Court judgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two brothers had fought a bitter public battle after his father Dhirubhai died without leaving a will. They split his businesses between themselves, with Anil getting telecom and power while Mukesh retained oil and petrochemical businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The split did not end the feud and the two bickered over commitment of Mukesh\u2019s Reliance Industries for supply of gas to Anil\u2019s power plants. In 2008, Anil\u2019s RCom wanted to merge with South Africa\u2019s MTN but the move was thwarted by Mukesh citing his holding right of first refusal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, the two brothers scrapped a no-compete agreement and Mukesh re-entered telecom business in 2016 offering free voice call for life and data at dirt cheap prices.As debt grew, RCom, in December 2017, entered into a deal with Jio to sell spectrum and other assets such as fibre network and telecom towers for an estimated Rs 17,000 crore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the deal could not progress amid regulatory hurdles faced as the Department of Telecommunications wanted a written assurance on who would pay for RCom\u2019s dues such as spectrum fee.Jio refused to make a commitment to pay for such fee and lenders to RCom also played hardball, resulting in the deal falling through.In separate statements, RCom and Jio announced scrapping of the deal, citing delays in getting approvals from the government and lenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jio said the master agreement for acquisition of certain specific assets of RCom and the spectrum trading agreement for change in allotment of certain specific spectrum stand terminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, it said, also follows the Board of Directors of RCom passing a resolution to seek fast track resolution through bankruptcy court and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal on February 4 restricting the sale, transfer or alienation of any movable or immovable property of RCom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe termination of the master agreement shall not, in any manner, affect the rights and obligations of the parties, accrued prior to the date of termination,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An Ericsson spokesperson confirmed that it has received balance payment of Rs 458.77 crore from RCom on Monday. Together with Rs 118 crore it had previously paid, RCom has cleared all dues, including interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last month, the Supreme Court held Ambani in contempt for not paying Ericsson\u2019s dues despite promising to do so. The court had warned to send Anil as well as Chhaya Virani and Satish Seth chairmen of two RCom units to jail if they fail to pay the dues in four weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Embattled billionaire Anil Ambani on Monday warded off a possible jail term as RCom cleared dues of a Swedish service provider at the eleventh hour with money received from elder brother Mukesh, whom he thanked for standing by him in trying times and extending \u201ctimely support\u201d. Anil\u2019s heavily debt-laden Reliance Communications made a Rs 550-crore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57339,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57337\/revisions\/57339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}