The Adani Group has called the report of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), “recycled allegations" and an attempt to revive the “meritless Hindenburg report".

“We categorically reject these recycled allegations. These news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report."

This time, The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s (OCCRP’s) investigations, published by The Guardian and Financial Times, has pulled down the market value of the 10 Adani group stocks by Rs 35,210 crore.

The associates of elder brother of Group founder Gautam Adani, Vinod Adani, and a member of the promoter group, are alleged to have created a complex web of structures within a foreign fund based in Bermuda to trade in Adani stocks. The two individuals, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli of the United Arab Emirates and Chang Chung-Ling of Taiwan, are said to have used the Global Opportunities Fund to trade in Adani stocks without disclosing their business ties with the Adani family. It was in 2010.

That is not all. There are also reports claiming that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India’s apex anti-smuggling intelligence gathering body under the finance ministry, wrote to the markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in 2014, alerting the regulator about suspicious trading activities of these offshore entities. SEBI told the apex court in India in its filings that it had initiated a probe against the Adani Group as late as 2020, raising questions over whether the regulator indeed probed the leads shared by DRI and the outcome of the earlier investigation.

A former SEBI executive, on condition of anonymity, said SEBI takes cognizance of every complaint shared with it and follows the rule book to take it to its logical conclusion. He said, “I cannot share if we did probe (the Adani Group) then, because the matter is sub judice, but please remember that in any such investigation, we need cooperation from overseas regulators. Not all overseas regulators have been that helpful," the person said without sharing any details.

According to sources, UK Sinha was the SEBI chairman in 2014; earlier this year, he became the chairman of New Delhi Television Ltd, the Delhi-based broadcaster acquired by the Adani Group last year. Any attempt to locate further details remained fruitless.

Adani group, in its defense also added that the cases cited in the OCCRP report on DRI were closed more than a decade ago, and even the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to the Adani Group in the matter. The case pertained to allegations of over-invoicing, transfer of funds abroad, related-party transactions and investments through foreign portfolio investors. “An independent adjudicating authority and an appellate tribunal had both confirmed that there w as no over-valuation and that the transactions were in accordance with applicable law," the Adani Group added.

The minimum public shareholding norms of SEBI prohibit promoters from owning more than 75 percent of a company. If any fund has common ownership with the promoters, then the shares owned by the fund will be included in the promoter group. Hence the allegations become more significant.

Ever since 2014, the power and influence of the Adani Group has soared, with the conglomerate acquiring lucrative state contracts for ports, power plants, electricity, coalmines, highways, energy parks, slum redevelopment and airports. In some cases, laws were amended that allowed Adani Group companies to expand in sectors such as airports and coal. In turn, the stock value of the Adani Group rose from about 8bn dollars in 2013 to 288bn dollar by September 2022.

The New York financial research firm Hindenburg published a report in January accusing the Adani Group of pulling off the “largest con in corporate history.”

The apex court had set up an expert committee taking cognizance of a writ petition filed in February to examine various aspects of the Adani-Hindenburg saga. In its status report on its investigations into the Adani Group, SEBI said it was probing the violation of minimum public shareholding (MPS) norms by the Adani Group between 2016 and 2020. However, the regulator added that the investigation into the MPS norms is not finished since SEBI had to contact several overseas regulators for the information.

Meanwhile, according to sources, Modi-linked Adani family secretly invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the Indian stock market, buying its own shares.

According to offshore financial records, associates of the Adani family might have spent years discreetly acquiring stock in the Adani Group’s own companies during its meteoric rise to become one of India’s largest and most powerful businesses. By 2022, its founder, Gautam Adani was India’s richest person and the world’s third richest with 120bn pounds. (IPA Service)