In the latest twist in the feud between brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani over the breakup of their family’s Reliance group of companies, Anil wrote a letter to India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to stop government ministries from allegedly intervening in favor of Mukesh. Anil’s letter accused Mukesh of delays in providing energy to Indian consumers and industry, the Financial Times reported. Anil’s Reliance Natural Resources is trying to enforce a 2005 family agreement under which Mukesh’s Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) would sell gas from the Krishna-Godavari area off India’s east coast at a significantly lower price than that set by the Indian government. The government has said it has ownership of the gas under a production-sharing agreement and that it must approve the price before any sale, the Wall Street Journal noted. India’s Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in September. In the July 15 letter, according to the FT report, Anil wrote, “Major power cuts, especially in north India, have become commonplace, causing grave hardship to hundreds of millions of consumers — sadly, all a result of RIL’s corporate greed.” At an annual shareholders’ meeting July 28, Anil criticized India’s petroleum and national gas ministry, the Wall Street Journal reported. “This bogey of sovereign ownership is being raised with the sole purpose of attempting to bail out RIL and help them renege on their contractual commitments,” Anil said at the shareholders’ meeting, according to the Journal. (Source: Financial Times, July 21, 2009; Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2009.)
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