Anil drops Rs100 b case against Mukesh

Anil Ambani on Tuesday dropped a Rs 100-billion defamation suit against his brother Mukesh Ambani that had been filed in the Bombay high court in India.
 
The defamation suit was filed by Anil Ambani in September 2008 alleging that Mukesh had defamed him in an interview that was published in New York Times on June 15, 2008.

In that interview Mukesh was quoted as saying that a network of lobbyists and spies were overseen by his brother before they split and that the network had since been expunged from his tranche of the company.
 
The newspaper had said: "What most distinguishes Reliance from its rivals is what Ambanis friends and associates describe as his 'intelligence agency' a network of lobbyists and spies in New Delhi who they say collect data about the vulnerabilities of the powerful, bureaucrats' schedules, about the activities of their competitors."

Talking to the Indian media today a spokesman of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group said: "Yes, we have withdrawn the suit claiming Rs 100 billion as damages."

Late last month the two warring brothers had signed a truce ending a bitter public and legal battle despite arriving at a family settlement to divide the Reliance empire in 2005 based on a formula worked out by mother Kokilaben.
 
As part of the truce, the two brothers decided to scrap a non-compete agreement between their respective groups, a move that would give each side flexibility to utilise resources more efficiently and enter businesses hitherto inaccessible.
 
They had also pledged to expeditiously renegotiate a gas supply agreement on the lines of the Supreme Court verdict of May 7.
 
A spokesperson for Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries declined to comment.

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