Mumbai: RIL has issued a press statement denying the reported allegations in a section of the press about investments of two companies in ONGC shares.

The RIL statement in turn alleged that during the last few days, a well-orchestrated campaign of disinformation has been unleashed about Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Reliance Infocomm Limited and its Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani.

The following is the complete text of RIL statement:

The stories published in a section of the press today (Dec 13, 2004) about the allotment of ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corp) shares to two companies and the attempt to describe them as "two private unknown companies belonging to RIL Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani "are baseless and an exercise in misinterpretation and distortion of facts.

These companies do not belong to Mukesh Ambani.

There is no mystery about the sources from which these companies obtained funds to subscribe to the public issue.

These companies are owned by Reliance Communications Infrastructure Limited (RCIL) subsidiary.

RCIL did not borrow from any banks or financial institutions to provide funds to two of its companies for subscribing to the IPO.

In fact, RCIL provided funds from its own sources. It is libelous to say that the "money was diverted from Reliance Infocomm to these companies".

It is also totally baseless to speculate that these companies "could have made a killing" on the day of the listing. In fact, over a crore shares are still held by these two companies, in spite there was a significant volatility in the price of these shares.

RIL will benefit from any gains that RCIL makes from these investments in the future.

What is true of the investments of ONGC is also true of the investments in TCS.

Various innuendos, invectives and allegations camouflaged in the news report as questions are irrelevant and tendentious, because these two companies are not owned by Mukesh Ambani.

There is no private gain for Mukesh Ambani, as insinuated in the newspaper reports. There is no loss to RIL or its shareholders. In fact, both of them will be benefited from these investments.