New Delhi: Amazon.com Inc has asked the Indian market regulator to investigate Future Retail Ltd for insider trading, it showed a letter accessed by Reuters as it seeks to prevent its business partner from becoming part of the empire of his rival Reliance.
The US giant has been lobbying the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to review Reliance’s August deal to buy Future Group’s retail, logistics and other assets for $ 3.4 billion, including debt.
Amazon argues that it had a 2019 deal with Future that prevented the Indian group’s retail assets from being sold to certain parties, including Reliance Industries Ltd, which is run by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani.
The November 8 letter to SEBI alleges that Future Retail disclosed to Reliance price-sensitive details of a court order issued by a Singaporean arbitrator to block the deal.
The dispute is being watched closely as a key test of whether Indian companies, courts, and regulators will honor arbitration decisions made in accordance with overseas arbitration rules, adding to Amazon’s headaches in India, which is also grappling with antitrust challenges.
The court order was granted on Sunday, October 25, and media outlets reported that Amazon issued a short statement saying it welcomed the decision.
Later that night, Reliance said in a stock exchange filing that it had been informed of the arbitration order and that it would enforce its rights to complete the deal with Future without delay.
It is this Oct. 25 filing that Amazon argues in its 20-page letter indicating that Ambani’s group was aware of the “price-sensitive” details of the court order.
Ambani’s group “was not part of the arbitration procedure … and could have received details related to it only from FRL (Future Retail) or its Promoters,” the letter said.
A Future Group spokesman said in a statement to Reuters that it denies the allegations made in the letter and that news of the court order had been in the public domain as of Sunday.
Reliance and SEBI did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Amazon declined to comment on the content of the letter.
Future Retail, which has argued that Amazon’s deal last year was only with a separate unit of Future Group, issued a statement to the stock exchange on the morning of October 26 saying that it was examining the arbitration order and believed that the order would have to. be tested by Indian law.
Future Group, which operates supermarkets and high-end food stores and has more than 1,500 outlets across India, has argued that it signed an agreement to sell retail assets to Reliance because its business was severely affected by the COVID pandemic. -19 and it was critical. to protect all your stakeholders.
It remains to be seen whether Indian courts and regulators will side with Amazon or Future Retail. Future Retail has petitioned a New Delhi court for an order to prevent Amazon from approaching Indian regulators to block its deal with Reliance. Hearings on the case began Tuesday.
This story has been published from a news agency feed with no changes to the text. Only the title has been changed.
.
