Adani family secretly invested in own shares, alleges OCCRP

New Delhi: Billionaire Gautam Adani's group was on Thursday hit by fresh allegations that it used family associates to secretly invest hundreds of millions of dollars through "opaque" Mauritius-based investment funds to fuel the spectacular rise in group stocks from 2013 to 2018. The conglomerate vehemently denied the charge. The Group had denied Hindenburg allegations and had stated that Vinod Adani has "no role in the day to day affairs" of the company. On the OCCRP allegations, the Group on Thursday termed them as "recycled allegations" and called them "yet another concerted bid by (George) Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report".

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said documents obtained by it revealed details of a complex offshore operation in two Mauritius-based funds managed by the partners of the promoter family.

The funds were to support prices of shares of group companies from 2013 to 2018 - a period during which the ports-to-energy conglomerate saw meteoric rise to become India's largest and most powerful businesses.

OCCRP said two close associates of Vinod Adani -- the elder brother of group founder, and chairman Gautam Adani -- are sole beneficiaries of Mauritius-based companies through which the money appeared to flow. Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli from the United Arab Emirates and Chang Chung-Ling from Taiwan spent years trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Adani group stock through two Mauritius-based funds that were overseen by a Dubai-based company run by a known employee of Vinod Adani.

Market regulator SEBI had been handed evidence in early 2014 of alleged suspicious stock market activity by the Adani Group, OCCRP said citing a letter. U K Sinha, who headed the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in 2014, is now a director and chairperson of Adani-owned news broadcaster NDTV.

The fresh broadside, which comes months after US short-selling firm Hindenburg Research published an explosive report in January that accused Adani Group of running the "largest con in corporate history", sent all 10 listed Adani stocks down.