The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which on Thursday focused its gun on billionaire Gautam Adani's Group, has prompted a response from US-based short seller Hindenburg Research, whose disruptive research against the Adani Group sent shockwaves across markets.
"Finally, the loop is closed. The Financial Times and OCCRP report that offshore funds owning at least 13 percent of the free float in multiple Adani stocks were secretly controlled by associates of Vinod Adani, masking the relationship with 2 sets of books," Hindenburg Research said on X (formerly Twitter).
The latest allegations come months after a US short seller claimed that the ports-to-energy conglomerate headed by billionaire Gautam Adani had engaged in accounting fraud, stock price manipulation, and improper use of tax havens, wiping out close to $150 billion in value of the Adani group's stocks. Hindenburg's accusations have all been refuted by Adani Group.
OCCRP said that its research discovered at least two instances in which the "mysterious" investors acquired and sold Adani stock through such offshore companies, citing a study of documents from many tax havens and internal Adani Group correspondence.
The two men, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling, who OCCRP claimed have close business ties to the Adani family and have held director and shareholder positions in Group companies as well as businesses connected to Vinod Adani, the elder brother of Gautam Adani, spent years buying and selling Adani stock through offshore structures that obscured their involvement - and made substantial profits in the process.
The documents "show that the management company in charge of their investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advise them in their investment", it alleged.
Meanwhile, 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.
