Reliance Group rebuts Rahul Gandhi’s charge of Anil Ambani being a "crony capitalist"

MUMBAI: Reliance Group on Sunday lashed out at Congress president Rahul Gandhi for calling its promoter and chairman Anil Ambani a “crony capitalist” and “dishonest businessman”.

“The Congress Party President Mr. Rahul Gandhi, in his typical cavalier fashion has continued his campaign of calumny, disinformation, distortion and malicious lies. Yesterday, he singled out our group chairman Shri Anil D Ambani as allegedly a crony capitalist and dishonest businessman — all obviously patently untrue statements,” a statement issued by the group said. Gandhi made the remarks in an interview to ET published on Saturday.

The statement also asked whether the Congress-led UPA government was supporting an alleged crony capitalist and dishonest businessman between 2004 and 2014 when the group got infrastructure contracts worth nearly Rs 1 lakh crore.


“We would like to remind Mr. Rahul Gandhi, that it was during the 10-year Congress-led UPA regime between 2004 and 2014 that the Anil Ambani led Reliance Group was awarded projects of over Rs 1,00,000 crore across diverse key nation-building infrastructure sectors such as power, telecom, roads, metro, by a government led by none other than Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s own political party – the Congress. The Reliance Group takes this opportunity to request Mr. Rahul Gandhi to clarify whether his government, for 10 long years, was supporting an alleged crony capitalist and dishonest businessman, to use Mr Gandhi’s own words.”

In the interview last week, Gandhi refuted claims that he was anti-industry and said that even though there were a large number of Indian companies to be proud of, there are also crony capitalists like Anil Ambani who were dishonest.

“We likewise dismiss his latest remark as yet another one of his multiple untruthful utterances, in the heat and dust of his electoral campaign, for which he has recently been facing contempt proceedings in the highest court of the land, the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the statement said.

The statement goes on to say that Gandhi has “attributed no basis to these claims” and provided no “credible evidence to justify his derogatory and defamatory campaign”.

Gandhi alleged that Ambani and his companies received Rs 30,000 crore from the Narendra Modi-led NDA government in the Rafale fighter aircraft deal and that the group had also got tax concessions from the French government.