The move comes days after Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio), the designated buyer of Infratel’s assets, had moved the bankruptcy court to seek forensic audit reports that had marked the accounts of Infratel and RCom as “fraudulent”.
According to people in the know, the rushed affidavit was filed over fears that Jio may back out of its plan to buy Infratel for about Rs 4,000 crore due to the label, dealing a blow to lenders’ efforts to recover some of their money. SBI didn’t respond to queries.
“The bank feels that the fraud tag on Reliance Infratel could delay the resolution process and the quantum of recovery could fall further,” said a bank executive aware of the matter.