Anil Ambani has money for Rafale, not for us: Ericsson

NEW DELHI: Pressing on its move for contempt proceedings against Anil Ambani for Reliance Communication’s default in making payment of Rs 550 crore, Swedish telecom company Ericsson rejected the industrialist’s plea of fund crunch as an excuse claiming that his group had made enough profit to invest in the Rafale deal.

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for Ericsson, told a bench of Justices RF Nariman and Vineet Saran that the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group must be treated as one entity and the group should be liable to pay liabilities of RCom.

“He has money to invest in Rafale. But he does not want to honour the commitment given to the court (to refund Rs 550 cr),” he said.Dave said RCom had, in its communication to the stock exchange in August 2018, said it had sealed the deal worth of Rs 5,000 crore with Jio to sell its fibre and other infrastructure and its share price shot up by 3% on that day. He said the deal is in addition of Rs 18,100 crore deal with Jio to sell spectrum and mobile towers.