Adani Group on Thursday rejected fresh allegations which said that the promoter group family secretly invested in their own companies via close affiliates.
“These news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report. In fact, this was anticipated, as was reported by the media last week,” said Adani Group in a statement.
Soros is referred to as George Soros, a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist who has been critical of billionaire Gautam Adani-led group.
The port-to-power conglomerate noted that the fresh 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 (Foreign Portfolio Investors). 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. Notably, these FPIs are already part of the investigation by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). 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,” said Adani Group.
It rejected these reports in their entirety and said that these attempts are aimed at, inter alia, generating profits by driving down these stock prices.
Most Adani Group stocks on Thursday morning were down by 2-4% each. Shares of the Group companies are yet to recover from the allegations of stock price manipulation raised by the US-based short seller Hindenburg Research in January this year.
The fresh allegations said that Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli of UAE and Chang Chung-Ling of Taiwan are individuals who spent years trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Adani Group stock. The two men have close ties to the Adani family, which also include them appearing as directors and shareholders in affiliated companies.
They are said to be associates of Vinod Adani and their investments were overseen by a Vinod Adani employee, raising questions over whether they were frontmen used to bypass rules for Indian companies that prevent share price manipulation.