An actor known to be as suave as a businessman, Akkineni Nagarjuna, who runs the Annapurna Studios, created a sensation by tweeting that neither he nor his studios owed any money to any bank.
The tweet came along with another one, in which he wrote, “We took a loan from banks to build new film facilities at Annapurna Studios earlier. All loans have been cleared.
“For the few who may believe so, neither me nor Annapurna Studios owe any money to any banks,” he tweeted.
Interestingly, on January 2, 2014, Andhra Bank and Indian Bank were said to have issued notices to the actor-businessman-producer to repay within 60 days the Rs. 30.3 crore and Rs. 28 crore that he owed them, respectively.
The actor, it may be remembered, had drawn flak from the Telugu film industry when he openly praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his demonetisation move and this tweet of his on Thursday is being viewed as a rebuttal.
However, the fact remains that Andhra Bank and Indian Bank had issued notices to him in Jan. 2014 seeking repayment of a total of Rs. 62 crore. In the absence of a response, the banks had even issued an advisory that no third parties would enter into an agreement with the actor or any of his people, also seeking to take over an extent of 7.25 acre of land in the Studios.