The Cheshire Cat

The 27-story home of Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai, known as Antilia, stands on the site of a former orphanage. The orphanage was a charitable organization established in 1892, and per its founding charter, its purpose was to care for and educate orphaned and poor boys belonging to the Khoja community, a small trading community in Mumbai. By 2002, the charity owned around an acre of land on Altamount Road, one of the most expensive real estate locations in India. In November that year, the charity sold this acre to a company controlled by Ambani for 21 crore rupees, or about $4.3 million. The real estate value of the plot at the time was no less than 200 crore rupees, or $41 million, according to an Indian publication called The Caravan. The sale price was around a tenth of the value The Caravan reported. There was a problem. The orphanage was a religious charitable trust, and to sell its properties, it was required to seek approval in advance from the state regulatory board for charities. No such request was made to the board. In 2004, the board issued a notice requiring an explanation. The charity fought it for a year before offering a settlement to the board. In 2005, the board agreed to take 16 lakh rupees, about $36,000. Its members voted that the sale of the land had been necessary for the orphanage's mission, and the case was closed. This was the approval that allowed the tower to be built. Ten years later, a state inquiry found that board members had committed misconduct for personal gain. In 2017, the board filed an affidavit in the Bombay High Court stating that the sale was illegal all along. So the board charged with protecting land donated for charitable purposes is the board that handed it over. And for $36,000, it gave up land worth at least $41 million. The land now accounts for most of the house's value. It cost about $77 million to build Antilia, but now it's worth an estimated $1 billion, and nearly all of that value is from the land, not the building. The sale has never been reversed, and the land has never been ordered by a court to be returned to the charity. Land given to raise orphans is now under a $1 billion house, and the only people who were paid to object took $36,000 to stop.