Grubstakers - Episode 48: Mukesh Ambani

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

This week we are back with a tale from across the pound the harbinger of corruption in India, the golden son of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani. Join us as we discuss the finer points of why someone who throws a 100 million dollar wedding, tears down an orphanage to build Antilia the worlds most expensive home for non orphans (no orphans allowed) and lastly how briefcases filled with cash greased the wheels until the Ambani's ended up on easy street. Enjoy!

Get lost, please. Thank you. I can tell you that every job has its ups and downs, and a union can't change that fact. I mean, it is the magic elixir of our age and of all ages. What it does for prostate cancer is amazing. You get a $200 million profit and you didn't have to pay any tax. Isn that true listen yes is that true or not yes it is you do not pay a profit when someone a tax when someone makes yourself for you become secretary of treasury so you didn't have to pay the tax there oh hello welcome back to grub stakers, the podcast about billionaires.

We're here for our first episode of the new year, 2019. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm joined by my friends. Yogi Poliwog. Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffries. And our first billionaire for 2019 that we're covering is a guy who knows how to party. Oh, yeah. Not as much as Jolo.

We're talking about Mukesh Ambani. And he made the news essentially for throwing a $100 million wedding. And it's just one of those things where it's like... If you don't know what that's from, listen to the bonus episode. It's one of those things where it's like... If you don't know what that's from, listen to the bonus episode. It's one of those things where the reporting you'll see on this is very surface level,

where it just says, hey, the richest guy in India threw a $100 million wedding... Allegedly. ...for his daughter. And they never really go into, like, well, how did he become the richest guy in India? But, I mean mean you know just kind of on the face of it there is the uh ironically wedding planner his downfall is he got high from his own supply what are you gonna do there is just kind of like the um the the unsaid implication which is of course in india um as of 2014 58 of the population lives on less

than three dollars here we go again. White people talking about India. It's just like with yoga and chai. Once again, whitewashed by the cloneliest again. Would you like to give these statistics, Yogi? No, you know what? Let's do Sean. Do them.

Because I'm pretty sure he's got the numbers on his hide. You want us to report all the numbers in crores? I do. Yes. Please do them in crores and locks, please, for our Indian listeners. And then tell us the average income of an Irish person and then talk about how the Irish were the real victims of the British Empire. Yeah, but do it in your Colin Quinn accent. For just five Patreon dollars a month, you can help a child in India by subscribing to our podcast.

My cousins would appreciate it. And raising awareness. The only podcast that does poverty statistics about India. You can help us spread this message. But yes. So the other one that's

pretty depressing is about 42% of the underweight children under five years old in the world live in India. So again, you're spending $100 million on a fucking wedding. percent of the underweight children under five years old in the world live in india so again you're spending a hundred million dollars on a fucking wedding uh a wedding that is attended by beyonce who does a private performance uh former secretary of state john kerry there's a video of him dancing in flip-flops turning down for what? I have been known to turn down for anything. I mean, in John Kerry's defense, he's done a lot for lowering India's percentage of malnourished children by pushing the blockade on Yemen and really increasing their percentage of world malnourished children.

Hey, a win's a win. Also, interracial couple royalty, Priyanka Chopra and Joe Jonas, the finest of our nation's entities, Joe Jonas and Priyanka Chopra. Was Nick Jonas there, or did they just get one Jonas? You don't get all three brothers. They broke up for a reason.

An interviewer asked him why Mukesh is still earning money at 44 billion net worth. And he's like, I need to get more Jonas Brothers. One is not enough. I'm a big Joe head. Being the richest man in India means nothing. If you only get one Jonas Brother at your wedding. Why do you think I started Reliance?

But yeah, so $100 million wedding attended by John Kerry, performance by Beyonce, Hillary Clinton. Again, speaking of the Yemen blockade. Yes, Nick Jonas. They apparently rented out five different five-star hotels exclusively for guests of the wedding. That's 25 stars right there though where they were married is uh the town that i fly into uh udhapur and then we drive to

where i i live in india so it um it's always interesting where like you know there's a a whole other part of india that i don't know that well because i'm not from there like the south and the east and parts of the north. But anytime Western celebrities or just very wealthy Indian people want to do like an Indian celebration, they just choose to go to the corner that I'm from. It's so frustrating. But yeah, so this week we're kind of focusing on Mukesh Ambani because we mentioned up top, Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in India.

He's, as of right now, January 2019, the richest person in Asia. He's richer than Jack Ma. Forbes estimates his net worth at about $44.4 billion. He owns 44.7% of Reliance Industries, which is a company that comprises 3% of India's GDP. So it's by market value, the biggest company in India. And he owns almost half of it. And it's a lot to...

Also, one of the most prominent industries, or one of the most prominent companies in India, with its own theme song that Stephen found. And the winning spree kept gathering even greater... That's Hank Azaria right there. That's it? I mean, I thought I had a longer version of the song, but it turns out it's got a spoken word part by Frank Azaria.

And the winning spree kept gathering even greater peace in this fourth decade of their lives. That was rap, actually. Can't stop Frank Azaria. All right, we get it. Is there a video over that of just like people handing briefcases full of money to politicians this is where we do insider trading but uh so mukesh so mukesh and bonnie it's like we're biting off a lot here so we're not going to get to anything everything but there's a when you pay off politicians and it's like, we're biting off a lot here, so we're not going to get to anything, everything, but there's a... When you pay off politicians in India, it's actually a giant dance number.

There's a lot of different scandals. Bollywood influences the French team. It should be mentioned that Mukesh's younger brother, Anil Mbani, is also a billionaire, but he's only worth about $2.7 billion. Boo. But so... What a chooch. Get a job. We'll do a future episode on Anil. If you happen

to be an expert on the Mbani brothers and you notice that we miss anything going through here, just hit us up on Twitter and we'll include it when we do the O'Neill episode. So basically, as of 2013, about 76% of Reliance Industries' revenue comes from oil and natural gas. They're originally in textiles, which we'll kind of go through but this is important because essentially energy natural gas these resources nominally belong to the people of india the indian state you know so you really just can't get around how this guy made say 44 billion by stealing things that belong to the people of India and then literally demolishing a fucking orphanage to make his giant mansion in Mumbai. Yeah, he made his own Xanadu by demolishing an orphanage.

He saw Annie and went, you know what? I like the land that they were talking about. But so I guess we can start with Mukesh's and Anil's father. Because they were brought up rich. They weren't born rich, but their father became rich. And then they inherited as well. Papa and Bonnie, what was his name? Right.

Deru Bahi. That's correct, isn't it, Yogi? Yes, that's perfectly correct. Sambani, what was his name? Right. Darubahi. That's correct, isn't it, Yogi? Yes, that's perfectly correct. Call it. The Lion King! So he was born in 1932, and I believe he was Bahia cast, B-A-H-I-A, which I am told, or at least his category of it, was a merchants and traders cast. And so the grandfather

Darubiah Darubiah The merchants and traders cast. Written in English. What's the English translation of the merchants and traders cast? The Gringotts as portrayed in the Harry Potter books. Trade Federation.

So, Dhirubhai, there's a biography written called Ambani and Sons by Hamash McDonald, and it was originally banned in India. There's a biography written called Ambani and Sons by Hamash McDonald and it was originally Banned in India There's a western name I'm not fucking it up Hamash McDonald's name? Hamish

Hamish Hamish Durba Hashbran McDonald But so the biography So the book Ambani and Sons alleges that But so the biography... The I.N.C. So the book, Ambani and Sons, alleges that the father, Dhirubhai, his executives were regularly passing briefcases full of cash to executives all over New Delhi.

Really? Throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, into the 2000s. They really never stopped. Yeah. But Dhirubhai was born in poverty. This is the grandfather know d'erobai was born in poverty this is the grandfather not mukesh he was born in poverty his uh his father uh did you say he was a real shylock figure uh his father mukesh's grandfather was a ghee trader and a school teacher ghee is a clarified butter for those that don't know it's a uh topping often used on rotis and nons and if

you had indian food you've had ghee is it is it a butter made from cow's milk it depends on how they make it yeah you can make it with like just regular butter you boil it and then skim off the top but then there's other ways of making it oh it's skim butter well i mean i mean not not not actually but yeah sure you could think of it that way. Yogi's father was also a gi trader. Yeah, right. But so... Sean, Yogi's Brahman. You gotta respect me, Sean.

He is from the priestly caste. I don't trust your mick-like sensibilities, all right? Yogi's like, hey guys, because you're doing someone from the BIA caste, I'm not actually going to talk today. Because it would be below me to comment on him. So you guys are going to have to... You guys need to do a bulk of the research on this. I can't even read about this. But so...

Yeah, at the meeting planning this, Sean suggested a billionaire from the Untouchable class and Yogi just walked out. If I continue that conversation, I lose two casts. Yogi has like fucking plastic gloves on and like an extra thing over the microphone. I'm Skyping this in. All right.

So Dilraba graduates high school. Again, he's born in poverty. He's born in poverty. But he graduates high school. And what he does is he gets a job in Yemen, which at this time is a British colony. So, you know, India, of course, gets their independence in 1947. As opposed to now where it's an iranian colony am i right uh the genocide was justified the uh so dirabai he gets uh he gets a job for a subsidiary of shell oil in 1951 in Yemen. So in 1951, he graduates high school, he goes to Yemen,

and he works in Yemen for about seven years. And he's actually like, he's very, you know, hardworking, diligent over there to the point where by 1956, he's actually the manager of refueling operations at a military base run by the Brits in Yemen. And Mukesh, for his part, is born in Yemen in 1957, but the family moves back to India in 1958. And the basic way this goes is, as we mentioned, Dhirubhai had been working in Yemen for seven years, and this is like a relatively middle class in terms of relative to the rest of India job. So he's able to build up some savings. And he also gets a residence permit so that if things fuck up when he goes back to India, he can always go back to Yemen.

But the family moves back to India in 1958 and he starts up his first business. And so basically the original idea is they're going to be like spice traders. Oh, and then, yeah. Yes? Yes. Did they ride the sandworms?

So, so he has a second, and so his startup capital is partly from what he's been able to save working in Yemen, but also he has a second cousin called Dimani, and his second cousin's father is retired because of, he has a second cousin called Dimani. And his second cousin's father is retired because he had a business, I believe, in Yemen as well.

So his father puts in 100,000 rupees. His second cousin's father puts in 100,000 rupees to them going to this joint venture. Friends and family LLC, strikes again. So yes, initially it's spice trading, but very quickly they move into synthetic textiles. God, I wish I knew more about Dune. Comment on this.

The spice must flow. It's their original business plan. Yeah. That didn't have as much of a ring to it as... I mean, it is catchy. 100,000 rupees, you say? In, yeah, 1960 yeah 1960 I believe around there Oh nice

Or 1959 1500 dollars in 1958 Money And yeah and I believe it was According to the Bonnie and Sons book He had about 3000 US dollars Now Let me figure it out

This is why we need to get a patreon because we should not be googling uh exchange rates and inflation for free oh i see you're saying yeah we shouldn't have to be doing it for free that's right we do this podcast for free there's definitely not six fbi agents in the room right now monitoring us as we, as we so discord on the left. But so what happens here is they, they start out in spice trading, but they move into synthetic textiles. And this is important because again,

early sixties essentially in India, nylon, polyester, et cetera, become, you know, throughout the world, but also in India at this time become the, etc., become, you know, throughout the world, but also in India at this time, become the cheap substitutes for, you know, cotton and silk, synthetic textiles. And so they quickly realized this is a big growth market. And just quoting from the Imbani and Sons book, the Indian government at this time is, you know, nominally socialist, but it very quickly

spirals into corruption, what's called the license raj. So the British government leaves, and then the original Indian government is set up, and they very tightly control who can do what in industry. You need licenses from the government, so this very quickly becomes corrupt, whereby people will just pay whatever government official to get the licenses. Seven million. What? It's not to get the licenses. Seven million.

What? It's not bad. Rupees. Rupees. So essentially, just quoting from the Imbani and Sons book here, the problem for yarn dealers was not usually to find buyers but to secure supplies. The tightening of industrial controls and import quotas since independence had choked supply of all these quote luxuries as the brahmins of new delhi channeled national

resources towards new complexes making capital goods such as electrical turbines and steel mills and so basically that was kind of his early problem was figuring out how to get more of these licenses so that he could increase supply. And there was very small domestic production of these synthetics, you know, nylons, polyester. But the other way to get them was through import licenses, what were called replenishment licenses, REPs. You were nominally supposed to use these as part of the manufacturer, but a lot of people, including Deidre Baye, essentially just got these import licenses, imported, and then sold them, resold them as a trader. So he's able to-

Make a double profit, essentially? Right. Well, essentially, because there's such a controlled supply of imported nylon, polyester, et cetera, coming in, because he's able to occupy this part of the supply chain and get these licenses, he becomes a big figure in the supply chain and get these licenses he becomes a big figure in the supply of nylon polyester etc gotcha and so this is in the 60s and um uh just again according to the ambanian son's book he uh diro by soon became the main player in the market for rep licenses because he makes connections with the government he gets these

licenses he also helps his friend get these friends and business partners get these licenses and uh his dominance put him in a position of being able to turn on and off much of the supply of yarn into the indian market and this is by the mid 60s so essentially he's uh doing very well for himself and uh i just want to kind of like do uh one more anecdote here to kind of explain how Diorba got his start. Him and his business partner used to, like I believe every week, they would, him and his business partner would catch an early flight to Delhi and then they would do the rounds of all the different politicians there, which is cash bribes. And so the significant politicians, they would do cash bribes. But again, from the Imbani and Sons book,

for the lesser bureaucrats, journalists, and others who helped promote the company's interest in various ways, Derabai's standard gratuity was a suit or sari length of material made by his factory. And so this is from the mid-60s. Yeah.

You'll imagine your boss is like, well, I've got a briefcase full of cash. What'd you get, kid? You're like, I've got a briefcase full of cash. What'd you get, kid? You're like, I've got this suit. It's a good suit, but it's not a briefcase full of cash. And so basically he starts out as we mentioned, a trader, but by 66 he's able to move into textile manufacturing, 1966. And significantly his first major backer is T.A. Pai, uh p.a.i and this is a guy who's like

from an old banking family in india like from 1925 they had a bank called syndicate bank which was at the time a private bank so t.a pie meets this guy uh and he wants to like bankroll him but interestingly enough um dirabai after like receiving major so 1966 we mentioned he moves into textiles ta pie's syndicate bank is his major funder for his move into textiles and uh but he does interestingly enough dirabai starts making quote conspicuous donations to educational institutes run by the pie family so you know there's like some kickbacks going on with these these bank loans and it's just kind of interesting soon they learn to tame the tiger on the boat but so but so

essentially the long and short is that the syndicate bank is initially a private bank that's giving him a startup. But what happens in 1969 is Indira Gandhi nationalizes the bank, but the loans and the business support actually increases to Deerabai after nationalization. So essentially, he's managed to, by the late 60s, get his claws completely into the government. And just from there, it's like an exponential growth. And it's like another interesting thing where essentially, as an apology, as it were, for nationalizing his bank, Indira Gandhi makes T.A. Pai the commerce and later the industry minister, I believe. And in this part, T.Aa. pie has a lot of influence over government policy regarding the licenses so dearby is able to lobby him even more and they set

up this kind of complicated scheme but basically in 1971 uh he allows um uh dearby to import polyester and then sell it on the domestic market, uh, in exchange for exporting some stuff. But he's able to be one of the only suppliers on the domestic market and sell polyester for like seven or eight times traditional international prices. Some stuff. What do you mean by that?

Well, so basically it's just, as we mentioned about the license Raj, there's like very little, um, licenses given out for people to import polyester so because his friend ta pie becomes um either the commerce or the industry minister at this time uh he's able to set him up with this uh import permission to import polyester and then resell it at the domestic market and be one of the

few suppliers at the domestic market where the price of the few suppliers at the domestic market where the price of polyester were seven or more times higher than prevailing international price gotcha gotcha so he's getting this very sweet little setup in this early 70s so it turns out the road to socialism is not creating a system where it's very easy to form a monopoly. Are you sure about that? Yeah. But so, as we mentioned, 66, he gets this bank loan. He sets up textile manufacturing

as well as trading. They set up Vimil. Is their slogan? I don't know, Yogi, if you've seen in India, they have the slogan, only Vimil, or V-I-M-A-L.

I've not seen that. It's supposedly, according to these books that i read uh very famous uh the the other book is gas wars which we'll get to in a second but um apparently that book was wrong but so basically as we kind of mentioned he's uh flying out to the capital making bribes to all these different politicians he's closest to indira gandhi though indira gandhi initially becomes prime minister in 66 she loses power in the 70s but she returns to power in 1980 um in big part thanks to dear by uh becoming a big funder of her uh yeah she loses indira gandhi loses power 1977. She returns to power in 1980. And this was so significant.

Dhirubhai was such a significant backer of her. If I can just quote from Imbani and Sons here, the first big party stage to welcome Indira Gandhi back to government was held at a hotel in New Delhi, was hosted by Congress MPs from Gujarat with assistance from Dhirubhai. Political observers noted that Indira spent more than two hours Wow. Wow. And so we mentioned Gujarat. It's interesting. He gets this permission to set up textile manufacturing in Gujarat,

and this will be significant later because Nindira Modi, now the prime minister, was governor of Gujarat. So he has all these connections with politicians, but in particular, Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi returns to power in 1980. And this, quote, opened a golden period for Dhirubhai Ambani. In 1979, his company barely made it to the list of India's 50 biggest companies measured by annual sales profits or assets. But by 1984, Reliance was in the largest five. Wow.

So, and again, like, it's hard not to get bogged down in all the little details, but there's a bunch of little licenses, import stuff, particularly throughout the 80s, that favor Dhirubhai at the expense of his competitors. And this is entirely possible

because of Indira Gandhi's favoritism of her government for him. What? Yeah. Indira Gandhi isn't the pure saint none of us thought that she was? Yes. Everybody loves her

except for the Sikh bodyguards who shot her to death. These are true things. Yeah. It was fun to learn about that. And then just like to kind of continue from the Indira Gandhi thing. In October 1980, Reliance received one of three licenses given by the government for manufacture of polyester. It's licensed capacity of 10.

Also, she's a Gandhi by marriage. Yes. She's not descended from Mahatma Gandhi. I also learned that. It's licensed capacity of 10,000 a year was by far the largest and at the time close to India's entire existing polyester fiber output.

Wow. So Indira Gandhi gives him the license to become the only major polyester manufacturer in India. Now, Reliance also makes purified teraflactic acid. Is that correct, Nady? Yes. Oh, and also, even her spouse was not related to Gandhi. He changed his name from Gandhi with an H and a Y to Gandhi with no H and an I.

But yeah, they... Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. What? But she was really channeling the spirit of Gandhi when she rolled the tanks on that Sikh temple and killed 500

people. Operation Blue Star. That's what his views were in South Africa. Yeah, so that's the story of Indira Gandhi is that she, again again comes to power in 1966 uh she's like initially kind of socialist but she's kicked out of government 77 and then she returns in 1980 and at this point she's so cynical that she's makes no excuses for just being completely corrupt because it's like what happens to steve jobs yeah exactly he gets fired and comes

back comes a megalomaniac. And then in the 19... We all get iPhones. And then in 1984, they do Operation Blue Star, which is some Sikh extremists take over a temple, and they disperse them Waco-style, which is the massive military crackdown. Hell yeah. 500-some people are killed,

and Indira Gandhi, for her part, is shot to death by her two Sikh bodyguards. Sick. And what Janet Reno took from that is, make sure you get them all the first time. But so. I did do some research. Of course. And I read about how Reliance produces purified teraflactic acid.

And I didn't know what that was. So I notified our lead physicist on our grubstickers team andy palmer to the case um yes and it turns out uh my physics background had nothing uh no connection to it but before i went to college i uh worked in a bottle factory that uh made pet bottles uh which are basically every Pepsi or Coke bottle or... That's the chemical that keeps the populace docile. Yeah, yeah. Pretty much every bottle that you buy any kind of pop out of or a beer at a baseball game,

any clear plastic bottle is made out of PET. Specifically clear, not colored? Or colored. Any plastic? Or blue, green, like Sprite or 7-Up bottles. Pretty much any color you have. Polyethylene terephthalate is the product, or is made from terephthalic acid. No one is here to correct me on that spelling.

But basically, terafetalic acid, I think, is a product from... It's a byproduct from petroleum, I believe. I could be wrong about that. It's very difficult to research yeah and it uh podcasting is not easy uh yeah uh it it causes a lot of dead air um

no so basically if you have um if you have a lot of control over, uh, chemicals or any kind of, uh, petroleum, you're going to have then a quick connection to be able to produce plastics, uh, PET plastics specifically. And so essentially if you create a lot of, uh, PET,

uh, PET is you, you're making a lot of money because PET is very widely used in all kinds of bottling and basically most plastic applications. So that's one of the things that Reliance makes a dickload of. Yes. They listened to that guy at the beginning of The Graduate instead of fucking Mrs. Robinson.

Oh. And so now they're rich and the guy who fucked Mrs. Robinson is sad. Oh. And so now they're rich, and the guy who fucked Mrs. Robinson is sad. Oh. But so just continuing on the story, in the 1980s, there's a major stock market expansion in India. Reliance Industries at this point, again, because of the favoritism of Indira Gandhi's government, becomes the largest share of any Indian company in the stock market at this time.

Every Indian song just sounds like a stampede that you didn't expect to happen. It's just all of the instruments doing a solo. And it works, but in some ways you're just kind of like, I don't, is that, was that a song? Did I listen to music just now? He died! But so 1986, Diderbai has a stroke. He makes, he mostly recovers.

But at this point, the two children take over more of the business. Mukesh is kind of a logistics guy behind the scenes. Anil is like the front face of the government, glad hand of the company. Glad hand. I mean, yes, the government. If you only use one of the instruments, it just sounds like you're stoned. Because they're meant to be played all together, but then you just play one instrument like the sitar,

and you've got like George Harrison's getting high anthems. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, also it's a very stoned type of music. It's an explosion of sounds. From their album Drug Discovery. Yeah, exactly. Which is one of the, is that the Pyramal Groups? Yes.

I'm told in the 1980s, a joke in India, I believe this is in the Gas Wars book, went, what's the most powerful political party in India? The Reliance Industries Party, or whatever. You know, so even by the 80s, this is, you know, multi-millionaire, one of the most powerful people in India, and this is what Mikesh

and Anil are able to inherit and start out with. Just like, interesting stuff. So, the father, he has another stroke, D has another stroke. He dies in 2002. But he leaves the family fortunate about $6 billion U.S. dollars as of 2002. So again, this is what Mukesh and Anil are starting with.

But so we've kind of gone up to how corrupt the government was. Real rags to riches story for these kids. We've kind of gone over how corrupt the government was under what was called the license iraj. You can say is. Yeah. Well, that's the story is that... No, Modi cleaned it up. Yeah. Throughout the 80s...

He didn't put a toilet in my house. Throughout the 80s and the 90s, this was, you know, the golden era of neoliberalism. So everybody had the idea that it's like, okay, the solution for corrupt governments like this is you just privatize stuff. And then you let market forces take over. And this will get rid of the corruption.

This works time and time again. And of course. In Russia, market forces meant mafia. Market force is the name of the guy that beats you up. It was a euphemism for semi-automatic rifles. I am market force. This is force. Invisible hand.

Yeah, market force is what destroyed that Sikh temple under Indira Gandhi. But so, basically, they... Or Modi's mass pogrom when he was a regional minister. That killed tens of thousands of Muslims. Market forces. So 1991 is the big turn in India to kind of like neoliberal privatization under this naive idea that this will reduce corruption. But of course what happens is the people like Dhirubhai and Mukesh and Reliance Industries who have the ear ear of the government, are all first in line for privatization. And this is particularly relevant for oil and natural gas. But I did just want to

highlight one random thing. In 1991, there was a share. So they go on like an acquisition spree in the 90s, 80s, under the starts of kind of privatization. But in 1991, there's a shareholder meeting to approve an Mbani Brothers takeover of a Bombay engineering firm. And at this meeting, it distends into a fist fight and massive brawl where both Mukesh and Anil were on the stage and they had to flee. So, you know, and Dhirubhai has like kind of

a very controversial reputation by the 80s because like a lot of newspapers allege rightly that he is corrupt with Indira Gandhi and stuff. So there's this kind of animosity towards the family and the company that a takeover meeting descends into a fist fight. But so I guess this is kind of like where Mukesh's story really begins. So Mukesh, he gets his degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology. But then he goes for an, as we mentioned, he was born, you know, 57. He goes for an MBA at Stanford University, but he leaves in 1980. But it's just kind of an interesting random anecdote here.

He's in the same class as Microsoft billionaire Steve Ballmer. And so in 2004, CNBC had... Rest in peace, King. He's still alive. It was Paul Allen who died. Oh. Yeah. You can't kill Ballmer.

That man runs off the energy of the people who hate him. Does he even dance at Clipper Games? Yeah. He'll live 100 years for every time he says the word developers. But so... There was a... You doubt this is just a tangent. There was Ballmer Hall.

Yeah. Which clearly he bought his name on. And it was... I thought it was because of chapsticks. It was just down the way from the much more problematic Sieg Hall. Which, how they got away... How someone let a guy with the name Sieg buy a hall. Put his name on a hall.

Anyway, back to... So, Bomber's being interviewed by CN interviewed by that was the 1930s andy he was stopping communism then but oh so yeah this is just like a charming anecdote from the book gas wars um which i read part of it's it's very dense it talks a lot about the corruption stuff but it's you know like obviously they hide this behind a lot of complicated formulas for pricing and this kind of stuff so it can just kind of blow your mind to try and wrap your head around it but one interesting anecdote from this book is in november 2004 cnbc has you know entrepreneur

summit or whatever um where uh both uh mukesh and bonnie and steve ballmer are there and they're talking to you know the assembled crowd and so so Mukesh and Bonnie talks about how, you know, uh, he came back from Stanford where he went with Steve Ballmer to help his father build reliance virtually from nothing to a $23 billion corporation. Not true. Of course,

that's a lot, but, uh, but so ball, Steve Ballmer goes up after him and Steve Ballmer says, I want to put one piece of information that Mukesh left out of his very wonderful and kind introduction. I hope he won't mind. But in our class in Stanford Business School, there were exactly two people who dropped out at the end of the first year,

me and Mukesh, and then from the Gas Wars book. This was a shocker. For decades, the world had believed Mukesh was an MBA graduate from Stanford University. So, and apparently he was like kind of pissed and like stormed off. Mukesh was, that he disclosed that he was a dropout. And it's just kind of interesting where if you go to say Mukesh's Wikipedia page today, it was like, it said something like, Mukesh had to leave Stanford at his father's insistence to help him build the business, you know. But it's just kind of funny that he spent, like,

decades lying about having an MBA, and then Steve Ballmer blew up his spot in the CNBC summit. But so, as we kind of mentioned at the top, Reliance, as of 2013, about 76% of their revenues are from oil and gas. From oil and gas. And the story of this, again, lots of random complicated stuff here. But the story of this is basically, India has various natural gas oil reserves. And they had a couple different schemes to extract these. They had a couple different public companies, including the Oil and Natural Gas Company, again, owned by the Indian government.

And they got their technology from the Russians. They bought the technology for, you know, oil and natural gas exploration. But the Indian government, as we mentioned, 1991, there's this neoliberal turn. So they want to start, you know, selling public assets off to private individuals. And oil and natural gas extraction is expensive. It's risky. You don't know if stuff will be there. So the Indian government comes upon this scheme where essentially the public oil and natural gas company using Russian technology goes and discovers these wells. But then once they discover that there's oil or natural gas there, they sell them to private companies. So essentially, an Indian government company is

doing all of the work and taking all of the risk. And then it's giving the profits to private individuals, particularly reliant industries. So which part of that process was Russian technology? The discovery stuff, yes. Oh, yes. Both parts. The privatization was Russian technology. But like a chairman of the oil and natural gas company in 2001, he asked for the records of the years between 1993 and 95, and to his surprise, found that many files were missing.

Files which came to important records of transactions during the period. And he also, basically, he heard rumors that... The most unbelievable part is that he was surprised. But so, again, this was what was called the New Exploration Licensing Policy, NELP. And this is, again, the idea that the Indian government will discover these oil and natural gas wells, and then they'll sell them to private companies so that the private companies can put in the capital to extract. And then there will be some sort of profit sharing agreement with the government. But, and so he also, this chairman of the oil and natural gas company, heard

rumors that there was bid rigging, because nominally these wells are supposed to be sold off on public auctions, where the Indian public company also has the ability to bid. So he heard rumors that essentially Reliance was getting pre-tipped to what the Indian government bid would be, and they were able to like slightly beat it.

And of course, as we've mentioned, endemic bribes and these kinds of things. So essentially, in 2000, Reliance wins the rights to this natural gas basin in the Bay of Bengal. It's called the KGD-6 Basin. And it's under this production sharing agreement, which, again, very complicated. It has like this weird formula. But the long and short of the formula is that if Reliance, what their profit is, is based on their costs. So if Reliance industry says their costs go up, they're able to increase their share of the profits. Right, right. So this is called gold plating, whereby Reliance starts, you know, charging, marking up invoices

for bathrooms and shit. Yeah, the military does this all the time. Right, exactly. Where they're like, fucking this shit costs more to do when in reality it doesn't cost anything to them potentially, but then they need more money on the books. It's like that episode of The Office where they got gotta spend money before the year's up or something. And so... You know the one.

Wait, which military? You know the one. It's like someone at your office who does all the ordering just like taking part of it and selling it. Yeah, essentially. On their own. Wait, I honestly don't know which military

because I could totally be the American military. Or the military. Someone orders way too much toner. In one specific example, they would trash a whole bunch of computers whenever the time was up. One of them was that they wouldn't let the American soldiers do laundry. They would hire a person and pay them $200 per load is what they're charging on paper. And I believe this was in Iraq. So they would like dump computers, charge, say people are doing jobs that don't cost nearly as much.

They're saying cost a whole bunch so that they can just take that money back and reinvest it into their own function of a business entity, in this case the military. One of the most fucked up anecdotes from that, because this is from a documentary on military contractors in Iraq. So KBR was like a Halliburton subsidiary. And so what they would do is they would drive empty trucks throughout the triangle of death. So these fucking drivers have to drive through the heart of the insurgency in Iraq,

delivering literally nothing so that KBR can bill the government for a trip where they delivered nothing. Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's essentially. And that's basically what got those Blackwater guys killed in Fallujah. Yes, basically. Yes. Yeah.

You know, the thing is, is that, that you know when we look at corruption in business it's not merely like oh we spilled a cup of coffee so we now need to buy more coffee or whatever it's also just hey say you spilled all of the coffee say you destroyed these this shit and then we'll just have two of them i mean it's kind of interesting because i think that every person is somewhat subject to like you order something off the internet and then it doesn't show up and they send you another one and you get two. And then do you send that back or do you just end up having two of them? If you're the type of person that keeps both of them, you could be in the military or a billionaire. Basically, Mukesh Ambani is able to increase the fortune because through bribery and bid rigging, they get the rights that should belong to the fucking public government company that discovered this. But to a massive, one of the biggest natural gas reserves in the entire country of India under the Bay of Bengal.

It's called the KGD 6 Basin. And it's interesting where we can't go through all the different corruption stuff because, again, there's just too much. We could if you paid us $40 a month. But just like one example from the Gas Wars book is V.K. Sebal

was formerly the head of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, the DGH in India. And he was investigated, the DGH in India. And he was investigated by the CBI, India's Central Bureau of Investigation. And so the basic story with V.K. Sibal is that his daughters, R.A.L., this is from the Gas Horse books,

Reliance Industries had, quote, helped organize a stay in Mumbai for his daughters and furnished an apartment acquired by his daughters. In 2005, both sisters had been residents at Delai House, the VIP guests of Reliance Industries, and the next year, another daughter had stayed at another Reliance facility. The weekly paper that reported this claimed to possess documents that clearly explained how Reliance Industries acquired a small firm that used it as a front company to buy an apartment for his daughters. So this kind of stuff, apart from just straight up briefcases full of cash. They're getting jobs for the children of various officials in the government or just straight out buying them apartments through front companies. And just like another example, there was in 2002, another government, the union

minister for divestment presided over the sale of 26% of the equity of the public sector company, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited to the Reliance Group in May 2002. And then the Reliance Group was able to dominate the Indian market for a wide variety of petrochemical products because of this privatization. So this happens all throughout the 90s, early 2000s. And kind of the interesting conflict here is that Anil and Mukesh, the two brothers, have a falling out after their father dies in 2002. Interestingly enough, Anil is kind of like cut out of the will a little bit because he marries a Bollywood actress

and his father doesn't approve of this. And he eats butt. Yes. So his father doesn't leave an official will, but de facto he cuts Anil out. his father like doesn't leave an official will but de facto he cuts an eel out he gives like 70 some percent of the company to mukash and uh he he did he like he kind of part of what's going on here is that uh bollywood actresses are uh traditionally from the untouchable cast go on andy that's why his dad cut him out yeah and so um uh like nominally uh the father didn't

want to have like a fight between the siblings to over the inheritance so he set them up in different divisions of reliance industries but uh mukesh essentially schemes in a 2004 he threw a complex shareholding pattern, through a maze of different investment front companies, he gets his cronies to occupy directorial positions in various investment companies within Reliance Industries. And then he calls a board meeting in 2004, which seems like to be totally innocuous and nothing going on. But at this board meeting in 2004, he basically makes it so that Anil no longer has any independent decision-making powers within the company. And then this gets tied up in courts. They originally have their mother brokers a settlement in 2005, whereby the long and short of this is that Reliance Industries, Mukesh gets about 70% of the company, but Anil gets the right to have natural gas from this just privatized basin at about $2.42 per something like million British thermal units or whatever. But Mukesh later wants to go back on that,

so he gets the government to raise the price of natural gas from about 242. It's worth noting that while they were suing each other and having these massive fights, they were living in the same house and had to make arrangements so that they wouldn't exit at the same time like they would go through like servants and like probably their mother so that like the whole time hey mom when's mckay's leaving i gotta get out of here in 15 and he better not be in the driveway it It was real like arrested development shit.

So funny. Except they still had their money. Man, I don't know if I could ever forgive a person if I married them and then my dad in this case was like, you're out of the fucking will because he married that person.

Would you ever... Because he gets screwed out of what? Like $30 billion essentially? Or $20 billion? Yeah, a lot of money. Would you sacrifice $20 billion to be with someone? I mean, is she a freak? If I could keep $1 billion, sure.

He's still worth $2.7 billion. I don't know. It's more money than any one person could. He's worth more than fucking Peter Thiel. I mean, neither one of them should exist. That's fair, but imagine having 20 more billion dollars at one bill. Like mentally, I feel like you could do so much more. You probably couldn't in reality.

Yeah, but I mean, who got control of the EVE Online account, though? EVE Online? Oh, yeah. But so we kind of mentioned again, it's a complicated little setup. But even though this is nominally privatized, the government of India maintains the right to set kind of the price of natural gas. Neil went to Wharton. That's where both Donald Trump went and our new friend. Oh, now I agree with their dad completely.

But so basically what happens here is that. A warden man doesn't deserve $20 billion. Anil wants to set up on his own. He wants to set up a power plant in India. And he wants to get this natural gas from his brother at a fixed price. And use it to supply his power plant and build his own he wants to set up a power plant in india and he wants to get this natural gas from his brother at a fixed price and use it to supply his power plant and build his own business empire but mukesh kind of fucks him out of this where he goes to the government and gets them to raise the price of natural gas uh for the entire industry from i think it was like 242 per million british

thermal unit two dollars 42 cents all the way up to $4.20 per million British thermal unit. And so Anil sues him. There's like a big fight between the brothers. This goes all the way to the Indian Supreme Court, I believe in 2010, where Mukesh wins. But they also decide that the government has the right to set the price of natural gas. And so this kind of continues where we mentioned about the gold plating and the cost overruns. Because Mukesh is sitting on one of the biggest wells of natural gas in India, he essentially realizes that the price of natural gas is going to go up in the future.

So he starts pretending that, oh, we're running into all these supply problems, or oh, there's weather conditions, or they start making up a bunch of bullshit to say, oh, we're running into all these supply problems or, oh, there's weather conditions. Or they start making up a bunch of bullshit to say, oh, we're just not able to deliver as much output as we thought we would. Because they're just trying to chill until the price goes up. And at the same time, they're lobbying the government to double the price of natural gas, which, of course, passed on to the consumers. So in 2013, the government announces that they're doubling the price from $4.20 per million British thermal unit to $8.40 per million British thermal unit. And this is just decided by the cabinet without a review of independent experts at all. And ironically enough, this and just general inflation, because the first price increase that we mentioned,

it was passed on to the consumer in addition to like food and other inflation that was going on in india this was like making it very hard for the average consumer and uh there was all this allegation that rightly mukesh was lobbying for this massive increase in gas prices so this ironically enough sweeps modi to power in 2014 and modi kind of splits the baby with regard to the gas increase. Like instead of increase, instead of doubling it, he increases it just to $5.61 per million British thermal unit. But in return for Mukesh, Modi completely deregulates diesel prices, like there had been price controls on diesel so instead he just completely deregulates those and all of a sudden reliance is able to just pop up its entire legacy

of diesel pumps and industry just almost overnight when modi takes power well and he'll have the last laugh because uh he uh provided funding for lincoln oh so he got to meet daniel day lewis probably oh did he? Mm-hmm. I mean, if you're funding a movie, like, you kind of, the actors have to kiss your ass. Are you looking at his Wikipedia?

Yes. There's another thing he mentioned. There's where he funded a film that like the French president's wife was in while working for a contract which was in cahoots with the French company.

Oh, nice. Yeah, so he's a dirty producer, if you know what I mean. Wait, which French president? Francis something, something. It says it right there, Andy. I don't know. I can't read.

Zergozzi? I don't know. No? Daniel Day-Lewis met him in character as Lincoln and was like, you're not the kind of Indian I did mass hanging

I'm in character, what do you want from me? Oh what, Lincoln wouldn't be racist to an East Indian person to his face? Oh I would have loved to see DDL doing in character defending of being racist to people Daniel, you can't call him a poon job. Well why not, huh? DDL doing in-character defending of being racist to people.

Daniel, you can't call him a Punjab. Why not, huh? It was historically written that Abraham Lincoln hated the Punjabs. I don't see why I can't call him a dirty Punjab. Listen, he is a Punjab. This is not an offensive Indian accent. It's my impression of Daniel Day-Lewis

playing Lincoln. I never saw it. Was it any accent. It's my impression of Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln. I never saw it. Was it any good? It's not bad. But so, again, the irony here is that because of Mukesh's corruption, the Indian government was completely thrown out of power in 2014, and Modi, who was the governor of the state in which Reliance Industries had its main operations, was thrown in on this anti-corruption wave. And again, he kind of splits the baby with regard to the price raise.

He doesn't raise it as much as the government was going to, but he deregulates diesel fuel. And just again from the Gas Wars book, in May 2008, Reliance had closed its 1,400-odd fuel pumps owing to mounting losses because of the state price controls and the state subsidies. In the first three months since Modi's deregulation, Reliance was able to reopen 230 of its fuel outlets. And so, you know, Modi kind of like lets them take over a large part of the diesel fuel industry in India. And also Mukesh has, using his massive capital base, become one of the major players in India's cell phone market under Modi. They give away dirt cheap plans that come with free smartphones or whatever.

And Modi, controversially enough, was even featured in one of their ads. It was like a newspaper ad with Prime Minister Modi in it for the company. You know. Yeah, the Ambani family now is mostly known, well, not mostly, but widely regarded for their cell phone

providing in India. But their phones are no good. Modi's greatest hit before becoming Prime Minister was when he was a minister in Gujarat. There was a train was set on fire and approximately 60 passengers were killed. And so he declared a day of mourning, which apparently was a wink,wink do a pogrom. And about approximately 2,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims. Coincidence?

No. And the police looked the other way. As a result, he was banned from many countries, including the United States, where he could not visit until 2014 when he was elected prime minister of India. But now he can come to the u.s well yeah he he the ban was lifted when he became prime minister and so he like came to america and like packed out madison square garden sure and got a photo op with elmo um and now he's just kind of uh despite having a background with the rss uh group that was previously known as the group that produced the guy who assassinated Gandhi,

despite that, he's now just seen in the world stage as this lovable technocrat, teddy bear. He likes to say that IT plus IT equals IT, which is information technology, plus Indian talent equals India's tomorrow. Well, the math adds up. Very controversially, that photo with Elmo, the red dye was provided entirely by pig's blood. Oh! Also, he's a virgin. Allegedly.

Allegedly. But so, you know, and that kind of gives you the broad swaths of how Mukesh Ambani was able to get to $44 billion. Again, he's like such a major player in this natural gas market that should belong to the Indian government. Interestingly enough, the Indian public company, the Oil and National Gas Corporation, would sue Reliance Industries, alleging that they had illegally drawn just billions of dollars, I believe $5 billion US dollars worth of natural gas was stolen by Reliance from areas that the oil and natural gas company had legal right to. Because they would just, you know, drink your milkshake, drill under their intake, what was...

And of course, because Reliance had such... I don't get the reference. ...has such major connections to the government, this is like, it's been protected at all these different stages where there would be different audits that would say, hey, Reliance is clearly gold plating or hey, Reliance is doing shady shit and Reliance would just refuse to submit documents to the auditors

and the government would protect them at various stages. So what you're saying is that one brother went with lincoln and the other one went with there will be blood but um i guess you know we can't get to everything but i do just want to talk about antilia because antilia is like the fucking most brazen shit i've ever read about in my life and dilly is the largest single family home in the world uh it was uh mukesh and bonnie bought the land for it in 2002 uh construction finished 2007 but in 2002 when he bought the land it was a fucking orphanage in mumbai which he knocked down and built a 400 000000 square foot private residence, the largest single family home in the world.

And it's this giant ugly tower that juts out of the Mumbai skyline. Now, before you judge him, I'm sure he hired many of those orphans to help build the tower. It was actually the orphans featured in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Those child actors, their homes were displaced for this monstrosity. It's 27 stories high, but it has extra high ceilings.

They paid better to build the thing than they were to act in Slumdog Millionaire. Antilia requires a staff of 600 for maintenance, including three helipads, 160 car garage, private movie theater,

swimming pool, fitness center, and many more anemones. Yo, 160 car garage, private movie theater, swimming pool, fitness center, and many more anemones. Yo, even that number, like it might be 600 people, but it might just be fucking 40 and it's like, ah, it's 600.

No one's counting the amount of employees in this building. I need 600 people's worth of money to fund this building. It is a value. You can afford it. It is the world's most expensive private residential property

valued at over $2 billion. But, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I was just saying. So the other part of the story is under a 1995 law, the board that ran the orphanage, which again was to educate the underprivileged children of Mumbai,

the board that ran the orphanage which again was to educate the underprivileged children of Mumbai the board that ran the orphanage under a 1995 law had no legal right to sell it to him but he just uh paid all of them off and uh engaged in bribery of the director yeah and then through like some other little scheme they they passed it off like oh this is like not applicable to the law because this property is held by x entity over here and they were able to sell it to him and this is actually like still tied up in court to this day but he was able to just ignore this law and set up a giant fucking private mansion residence and um it's just i don't know What a fucking crook. Should children without parents deserve education and a fucking roof over their head? No.

I deserve the largest house in the world. But as we all know, real estate is about location. And if this house was anywhere else, it would be worth more. He's giving them the practical education of having a giant tower to look up to and dream that one day they will fucking raid that tower in a revolution. Oh, yeah. In the book, The Billionaire Raj, there's a quote where, like in The Other Billionaire, it's like, why would he do that? That is what causes revolutions. The kids at the orphanage, those Sikh bodyguards kids.

And, yeah, and so, you know, look, we can't get to everything, but in addition to other scandals, there's... Wait, we'll just skip to the end of his life. Rough Spud. There was another scandal where reliance was um showing long distance phone calls originating from the u.s as if they were local calls and bilking the government out of millions of dollars there there was another scandal with a tax cheating through uh the embodies are fucking leeches it's as simple as that they say the work they're gonna do is gonna cost xml and then they

charge y they're fucking trump in a goddamn brown skin suit would you say all billionaires are parasites yeah i think i would seems seems like it'd be a good thing to put on a t-shirt drop i just i just want to believe in the power of billionaires, you know? Oh, weren't you saying that Mukesh's son maybe killed somebody? I know in that billionaire Raj book that he read, they were allegedly involved in a car accident. Yeah, so, no, he didn't kill somebody, but he did. So what happened is that there was this Aston Martin just like racing down the street,

weaving in and out of traffic and then he just hit a car caused like this four car pile up. No one got killed. So there's another story where because this Aston Martin thing happened but then there's another one that happened I think in 2017 where he was drunk driving and may have killed two people but then like the ZTV was like we're pretty sure it's ambani and then some of the police reports were like no this guy had a mustache no they they pulled the that ain't the guy we're looking for our guy's got a mustache trick yeah yeah and they got the the first like they clearly did it the first time with the aston martin where

like the car crashed and then it was being trailed by three security cars. And so they just kind of loaded him or loaded the driver into one of the security cars and like zipped off and left the Aston Martin there. And they later said, oh, it's a company. The Aston Martin's owned by the company. It was being test driven by a member of the company. Right, right. company it was being test driven by a member of the company right right and uh the police were like oh uh we can't find it we're sending it in for testing and then the aston martin apparently just sat outside the police station under a gray blanket for like two years before just disappearing

yeah well they were running quote testing on it right right um and the person who got hit originally like made kind of a stink about it and then she got quieter and quieter i think as um some money started flowing she has been seen on yachts on the coast of bombay yeah the other thing is that one of his kids if you just google like mukesh and bonnie sons in bing at least one of the autocompletes is like, Mukesh Ambani's son mentally disabled? So I don't know if he has a disability or not, but the internet believes he does, which is sometimes enough information for me. The wedding that Isha Ambani, which cost $100 million, she married this dude whose parents run the Pyramal Group, P-I-R-A-M-A-L. And so it's a wedding of love in quotations, but it's also just two businesses saying we like to fuck now.

And the guy she married looks kind of like a creep. Gonna be honest with you, if it comes out that this dude is shitty, I'm not gonna be shocked. Look at his face. Look at those eyes. They're dead on the inside. I like the idea of Mukesh Ambani's son killing two people and being like, oh, I thought I was driving through a Sikh temple. But yeah, so like, and then just like two other weird... Turns out they're Muslim

and like Modi just grants them a pardon. Hey, I want to mention one thing real quick. I don't know if I have enough legs for this but i was watching some indian news um on youtube about umbani and there's something about the cia yes an agent named fernandez and indira gandhi from the 70s that mukesh umbani is somehow connected to or no dirubai is connected to but I don't know exactly how but I think that the contracts that um Reliance ended up cutting with the Indian government through Indira Gandhi were somehow um assisted by uh Fernandez the CIA agent now I don't know that much more about this but if any of our listeners know what I'm trying to say, please let us, please tell us. It's been keeping me awake for four weeks now.

So I just want to close out with two other weird coincidences from Mukesh Ambani, which, okay, so there's two instances of suspicious deaths. Just two? That we know of. And again, we're just making it very difficult for yogi's next return trip to india oh yeah but um again as we mentioned mukesh ambani is the richest person in india the indian media is very reluctant to criticize him or publish any sort of negative pieces about things going on for all sorts of varieties of reasons, including his influence in the government, his money, his connections. So during the dispute between the two brothers,

Anil and Mukesh, in April 2009, a private company that ran helicopters for Anil and Bonnie, what happens is one of the helicopters in April 2009 is supposed to ferry Anil and some of his people around, but one of the technicians who happened to be there

decided to conduct a final check and found that the cap of the filter neck was not fitted properly. He opened it and found a peanut-sized pebbles inserted inside. Had it taken off, it would have crashed and exploded killing amir al-abani now the the weird thing about what happens to this guy the technician is a guy's name uh barat

uh borji um he initially suspects uh corporate rivalry uh and reports it as such to the police a few days later borji's body was found on the railway tracks in mumbai with a quote suicide note in his pocket addressed to the investigating officer the note the note read the note read quote my parents have brought me up with the right values and i would never get involved uh in any wrong activity um uh when after you questioned me after the police officers questioned me reliance officials visited me and they asked me some questions but i didn't tell them anything one of them took my number and said they would talk to me again the next day i got scared that i would be quote used i wanted to inform you about the meeting but when i visited the crime branch

office last night i saw a person being beaten up and that scared me and i came back your investigation is proceeding in the right direction and the truth will come out soon. That's what he said and the police claim that he threw himself in front of the track but it's so weird because according

to one source, the note that it was, the suicide note in his pocket was quote, too clean and was not crumpled. What?

How can you get run over by a fucking train and then not have a crumpled note on you? That depends on the angle that you're hit. You know, Andy, you fucking ruin everything. And then the other one is... Like, what pocket was it in and what side did the train hit on?

It doesn't matter. It could. It's way too crisp. Way too crisp. You ever have a crisp dollar bill on your wallet? It gets uncrisp, even if you don't get hit by a train. I'm just saying, we've got to look at all the facts. So Mark Ames, a journalist, noted for his respect of Russian women

and age of consent laws within Russia, but he was actually publishing a blog at some point, and he wrote an oh publishing a blog okay he wrote an interesting story which was about how the chief minister of a province i believe uh indira pradesh or was it uh basically the chief minister of a province that was raising some objections uh over the embody the ambani brothers um uh fight over the gas deposits, mysteriously died in a helicopter crash three days after he. So basically, this chief minister was saying that the government should investigate and play a decisive role in this natural gas dispute. It is for the government to decide who should get the gas and what price.

It is not to be decided by the mother or these two brothers. And, you know, it made a lot of very strong remarks. And then, of course, several days later, dies in a helicopter crash. And so the ending to this story with Mark Ames is he publishes this blog post, and then about four months later, an Indian TV station runs a report on this,

this mysterious murder of, or this mysterious death, I should say, in a helicopter crash of a chief minister just days after he was very critical of the Ambani brothers. And it causes a mass riot in India, leaving 185 people arrested and about 100 businesses linked to thembani's burn to the ground but yeah and just like interestingly enough he also mentions Mark Ames does that Larry Summers up until he went to work for the Obama administration was one of Mukesh and Bonnie's chief business managers so you heard it here first folks Larry Summers coordinated two murders

In India Now I'm more afraid to go back to India than ever before There's this Interestingly enough At his daughter's wedding People were doing the train tracks dance Where you lie down And pretend

To have somebody put a note in your pocket. There's an incredibly popular news host in India called Arnab Goswami. We make fun of his pronunciation. He came up with one of you. Did I do it right? Did I do it wrong? I don't think so. Okay.

What cast is he? Yogi needs to know before we move on to this segment. I do it right? Did I do it wrong? I don't think so. Okay. What cast is he? Yogi needs to know before we move on to this segment. I do, yes. And I need you to figure out his net worth in 1994. Let's see. Oh, he's Brahman. Oh, you can continue with your story. He's Asamisi Brahman.

Okay. And so he's this very incendiary news host, very like Fox News type. Even John Oliver made that connection at one point. And so I looked up to see if he had anything to say about Mukesh Ambani. And the first thing I got was on Quora. Is Arnab Goswami afraid of Mukesh Ambani? This was submitted over a year ago, and there have been no answers.

And then related questions. Is Arnab Goswami a Jew? Wait, that's the only reason you brought up this? To read that question? Yeah. So he's a member of the merchant class. Cast.

Well, I guess that, you know, again, we weren't able to get to everything with... Well, we're going to round out this episode with a Quora quote. Is an Indian guy a Jew? Great reports, everyone. Question we will be answering in a future episode. That's right. You know what I love about the internet?

How it democratizes information. Any person, no matter their social standing, can go online and pose to billions of people whether or not an Indian TV presenter is a Jew. Arnab Goswami. Jew? If our listeners could help us answer that question as well, we would greatly appreciate it. Send all answers to Quora.com slash GrubStakers. Put the triple echo over his name in post.

But yeah, Mukesh Ambani, $100 million on a birthday, 400,000 square foot mansion, buys his wife a $60 million private jet as a birthday present, all while living in a country where 42% of the underweight children under five years old live.

So good billionaire in conclusion. But, you know, again, we weren't able to get to everything, but if we miss some stuff about Mukesh Ambani, we will do a future episode about his brother Anil. So hit us up on Twitter or at the Grubstakers podcast at gmail.com. And check out our Tumblr with all of the links to everything we've researched on this episode. It'll be up in several months.

If you recorded any pop tracks about partying, we would also love to have those. We would like to have the most extensive library of corrupt billionaire music produced by Swizz Beatz. Ironically enough. I'm more of a just blaze fan myself autotune was invented because of deepwater oil expert

that's right Exxon Exxon yeah they created autotune you know about this I've heard bits and pieces well we'll talk more about it on a future episode yes next week

we'll be covering the king of Jimmy John's Jerry Jones I thought he was the Cowboys owner. He is. But yes, as per... His initials are JJ. That was a suggestion on Twitter that we take a look at Jerry Jones. He'd be a fascinating guy.

So again, if you have stuff you'd like us to look at for Jerry Jones or other billionaires, hit us up at GrubstickersPod on Twitter. Turns out he did not die in a mass suicide in the jungle. And with that, this has been Grubstickers. I'm Yogi Paiwal. I like how next week's episode is going to be nominally about how this guy's a bad billionaire, but it's all just going to

be Seattle people bitter that the Cowboys just beat us. Let's look at the Cowboys and their role in CTE. Much different from Seattle, which takes very serious precautions to prevent concussions and CTE among their players.

Seattle is an ethical NFL team. That's right. All right. Anyways, hey, thank you for listening. Happy 2019. We wish you all the blessings in the world. And please hit us up with keep your feedback coming with the podcast. We're excited for another year of covering billionaires.

We love y'all. Yeah. With Adam Sean McCarthy. Steve Jeffers. Andy Palmer. Good night. Bye.