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The famous magnate Anil Ambani was found guilty of contempt of court by the Supreme Court of India. He was told he was facing jail time if his company did not pay $ 77 million to Sweden in four weeks.
Ericsson sued Ambani over unpaid contributions for services rendered to Reliance Communications, which filed for insolvency this month. The businessman had personally badured the court that the commander of the Republic would pay 5.5 billion rupees to Ericsson by December.
After the commander failed to make the payment, Ericsson filed a new lawsuit seeking that Mr. Ambani be detained for contempt of court.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court found Ambani guilty of the offense, alongside Satish Seth and Chhaya Virani, chairman of Telecom Reliance Telecom and Reliance Infratel.
The court refused to arrest them immediately but said Mr. Ambani would face three months in jail if the remaining amount was not paid within four weeks.
In a brief statement, the RCMP stated that it respects the judgment and will comply with it. A spokesman for the company said that Mr. Ambani, Mr. Seth and Ms. Virani did not have any other comments.
Ericsson said it welcomed the decision and looked forward to meeting the obligations of RCom.
The decision comes as Ambani faces growing challenges in keeping his grip on his heavily indebted group. It holds majority stakes in its major listed companies through wholly owned investment companies, but most of these holdings are now badigned as collateral to lenders as collateral for loans.
After the fall of the group's shares on 1 February following the insolvency of RCom, two of Ambani's nine lenders began selling pledged shares. The shares of its infrastructure and electricity companies then fell by more than 50%.
Ambani's group has filed several lawsuits against financial group Edelweiss, whose mutual funds sold a large amount of pledged shares, alleging that the shares were illegal. Edelweiss denies having committed a wrongdoing.
On Sunday, Ambani's office said in a statement that he had reached an "agreement in principle" with most of his lenders. He indicated that they would no longer sell the shares announced until October and that Mr. Ambani would liquidate his direct interest in his electricity business in order to repay his loans.
However, three of the lenders subsequently told the Financial Times that they had given no badurances to Mr. Ambani regarding the pledged shares.
Ambani's spokespersons did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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