Controversies and criticism
The Reliance Petroleum case is the one that reached a formal penalty. Reliance Petroleum, a subsidiary, went public in April 2006 at 60 rupees a share; the market fell sharply afterwards, and the securities regulator later found that Reliance Industries, with the help of agents, had run an organised operation to make unauthorised profits from trading in its own formerly listed unit before the two companies were merged in 2009. Reliance Industries was fined 950 crore rupees, split between 447 crore rupees of retracted gains and 500 crore rupees of interest, and the regulator separately fined Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani and two other entities in the same matter.[1][6][7][8]
In February 2014 a First Information Report alleging criminal offences was filed against him over alleged irregularities in the pricing of natural gas from the KG basin, one of a series of disputes over that field between the company and the government.[1]
He is frequently described as a crony capitalist by critics, who point to the timing of the group's growth alongside the governments of the day, and to his relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The charge is made in the press rather than proved in court, and it is the sharpest criticism that attaches to him: not that he broke a specific rule, but that the rules themselves have been shaped by the scale he occupies.[1]
The group's oil trading since 2022 has produced a second, more recent line of criticism. Following the invasion of Ukraine, India became one of the largest buyers of Russian crude; imports from Russia rose from about 3 per cent of the total in 2021 to about 42 per cent in 2025, and Reliance was the largest importer. The company has said the purchases are commercial and legal, and Western sanctions have not prohibited them, but the reporting has been steady.[1]
The 2024 wedding produced a third, softer controversy: the visible cost of the celebration, estimated between 300 and 600 million dollars, became a reference point in the Indian argument about wealth inequality, and the family's defenders and critics used the same event to make opposite points.[12][13][14][15]
