Gautam Adani-led Adani Group on Thursday rejected fresh charges made by global investigative network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), calling its findings as 'recycled allegations'.
OCCRP alleges that new documents obtained by its reporters reveal two men who spent years trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Adani Group stock: Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling. "Both have close ties to the Adani family, including appearing as directors and shareholders in affiliated companies," it states.
"Records show that the investment funds they used to trade in Adani Group stock received instructions from a company controlled by a senior member of the Adani family," says OCCRP.
Countering the accusations, the Adani group says these news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid by George Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to 'revive the meritless Hindenburg report'.
OCCRP says that neither India's stock market regulator nor a high-level expert committee has been able to prove what many suspect: "that some foreign owners of publicly listed Adani Group stock are, in fact, fronts for its majority owners."
The investigative platform alleges that documents from multiple tax havens, bank records, and internal Adani Group emails "show how hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded Adani stock through opaque investment funds based in the island nation of Mauritius."
"The documents show that, through the Mauritius funds, they spent years buying and selling Adani stock through offshore structures that obscured their involvement — and made considerable profits in the process. They also show that the management company in charge of their investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advise them in their investments," it alleges.
Meanwhile, the Adani group says these claims are based on closed cases from a decade ago when the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) probed allegations of over-invoicing, transfer of funds abroad, related party transactions and investments through FPIs. "An independent adjudicating authority and an appellate tribunal had both confirmed that there was no over-valuation and that the transactions were in accordance with applicable law. The matter attained finality in March 2023 when the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India ruled in our favour. Clearly, since there was no over-valuation, there is no relevance or foundation for these allegations on transfer of funds," the ports-to-energy conglomerate says.
These FPIs are already part of the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Adani group says. As per the Expert Committee appointed by the Supreme Court, there is no evidence of any breach of the Minimum Public Shareholding (MPS) requirements or manipulation of stock prices, it says.
The company says these attempts are aimed at generating profits by driving down Adani Group's stock prices and these short sellers are under investigation by various authorities.
"We have complete faith in the due process of law and remain confident of the quality of our disclosures and corporate governance standards. In light of these facts, the timing of these news reports is suspicious, mischievous and malicious - and we reject these reports in their entirety," says the Adani group.
