Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said the government must act immediately to eliminate all conflicts of interest in market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) investigation of Adani Group.
This comes after Hindenburg Research alleged that SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her spouse invested in the same Bermuda and Mauritius-based offshore funds in which Vinod Adani and his close associates Chang Chung-Ling and Nasser Ali Shahban Ahli invested funds and earned from “over-invoicing of power equipment.”
These funds are believed to have been used to amass large stakes in Adani Group companies in violation of SEBI regulations, Ramesh alleges. “It is shocking that Buch would have a financial stake in these same funds,” he says in a statement.
“This raises fresh questions about Gautam Adani’s two 2022 meetings in quick succession with Ms Buch shortly after she became SEBI chairperson,” the Congress leader says, recalling that SEBI was supposedly investigating Adani transactions at the time.
The fact is that the seeming complicity of the highest officials of the land can only be resolved by setting up a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) to investigate the full scope of the Adani-Hindenburg issue, the Congress general secretary says.
SEBI’s strange reluctance to investigate Adani has been long noted, not least by the Supreme Court’s expert committee, Ramesh alleged. The committee had pointed out in its report that SEBI had in 2018 diluted and in 2019 entirely deleted the reporting requirements relating to the ultimate beneficial ownership of foreign funds. This had tied its hands to the extent that “the securities market regulator suspects wrongdoing, but also finds compliance with various stipulations in attendant regulations… It is this dichotomy that has led to SEBI drawing a blank worldwide,” according to the expert committee.
“Under public pressure, after the Adani horse had bolted, SEBI’s board reintroduced stricter reporting rules on 28 June 2023. It told the expert committee on 25 August 2023 that it was investigating 13 suspicious transactions. Yet the investigations never bore fruit,” Ramesh says.
Responding to the latest allegations from Hindenburg, SEBI chairperson and her husband Dhaval Buch in a press statement said all disclosures as required have already been furnished to SEBI over the years. “We have no hesitation in disclosing any and all financial documents, including those that relate to the period when we were strictly private citizens, to any and every authority that may seek them. Further, in the interest of complete transparency, we would be issuing a detailed statement in due course. It is unfortunate that Hindenburg Research against whom SEBI has taken an Enforcement action and issued a show cause notice has chosen to attempt character assassination in response to the same," the statement said.
