New Delhi: The billionaire Gautam Adani’s group was slammed by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on Thursday with accusations that hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded group stocks through ‘opaque’ investment funds based in Mauritius and run by members of the promoter family.
However, the conglomerate have denied the accusations, PTI reported.
The fresh allegations by an organisation funded by likes of George Soros and Rockefeller Brothers Fund come months after a US short seller wiped away close to USD 150 billion in value of Adani group stocks with allegations of accounting fraud, stock price manipulation and improper use of tax havens by the ports-to-energy conglomerate run by billionaire Gautam Adani.
Adani Group has denied all Hindenburg allegations.
Citing review of files from multiple tax havens and internal Adani Group emails, OCCRP said its investigation found at least two cases where the “mysterious” investors bought and sold Adani stock through such offshore structures.
The two men, as per PTI, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling, who OCCRP claimed have longtime business ties to the Adani family and have also served as directors and shareholders in Group companies and firms associated with Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani, “spent years buying and selling Adani stock through offshore structures that obscured their involvement – and made considerable profits in the process.”
The documents “show that the management company in charge of their investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advice them in their investment”, it alleged.
Adani in a statement categorically rejected what it called as “recycled allegations”, calling them “yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report”.
“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 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,” it said.
The foreign portfolio investors named in the OCCRP report “are already part of the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)”, it said. “As per the Expert Committee appointed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, there is no evidence of any breach of the Minimum Public Shareholding (MPS) requirements or manipulation of stock prices.”
“These attempts are aimed at, inter alia, generating profits by driving down our stock prices and these short sellers are under investigation by various authorities. As the Supreme Court and SEBI are overseeing these matters, it is vital to respect the ongoing regulatory process,” it said.
“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.”
