Anil Ambani, the chairman of India's Reliance ADA group, appeared on Tuesday before a parliamentary panel investigating a multi-billion dollar telecoms graft scandal that has rocked the country's political and business establishment. Ambani testified days after police indicted officials and a unit of his group for conspiracy, cheating and other offences during a flawed 2007-08 telecoms licence grant process that may have cost the state up to $39 billion in lost revenue.
"Anil Ambani requested that he not be asked anything which could be used against him in the court case," the panel chairman, Murli Manohar Joshi, said at the end of a day that saw several industry executives testify behind closed doors. Joshi, however, described the billionaire as "candid," and said Ambani had promised to follow up on questions to which he did not have immediate answers.
The scandal is the largest of several corruption cases to have emerged in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's second term. It has badly damaged the government's credibility and set off worries about regulatory risk in Asia's third-largest economy. While Ambani did not speak to reporters gathered inside the colonial-era parliament building after his appearance, the spectacle of some of India's biggest business names being questioned is almost unheard of in a country where leading industrialists have long been seen as untouchable. The Wharton-educated Ambani, whose ranking on the recent Forbes global rich list fell to 103 from 36th a year earlier, appeared a day after tycoon Ratan Tata was questioned by the same Public Accounts Committee.
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