NEW DELHI — India's Future Retail on Saturday filed a
new case against Amazon.com Inc.
at the Supreme Court in its latest effort to
seek clearance for its $3.4 billion retail assets sale, which the US firm has
challenged.
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The Supreme Court this month dealt a blow to Future when it said
an interim decision by a Singapore arbitrator in October 2020 that put its deal
with Reliance Industries on hold — following Amazon's complaint — was valid in
India.
The top court had also said Future could not appeal a lower
court's decision against it. The retailer is now asking the top court to hear
the challenge, people familiar with the
case said.
In its over 6,000-page filing, Future has argued that if the
deal with Reliance doesn't go through, it would cause "unimaginable"
damage to the group, including possible job losses for 35,575 employees, and
put at risk roughly $3.81 billion in bank loans and debentures.
"There is extreme urgency to hear this petition,"
Future counsel Yugandhara Pawar Jha said in the Supreme Court filing, which is
not public. Reuters has seen the filing.
Amazon and Future spokespersons did not respond to requests for
comment on Saturday.
Amazon has for months been locked in a dispute with Future, and
accuses the Indian firm of violating contracts when it sold its retail assets
to market leader Reliance last year. Future denies any wrongdoing.
The outcome of the tussle involving two of the world’s richest
men, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani, is seen as reshaping
India’s pandemic-hit shopping sector and deciding whether Amazon can blunt
Reliance's dominance of the country's nearly trillion-dollar retail market.
The dispute started after Future, India's second-largest
retailer, with more than 1,700 stores, including popular Big Bazaar
supermarkets, entered a deal last year to sell its retail businesses to
Reliance after COVID-19 hit its operations hard.
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