NEW DELHI, Aug 31 — Millions of dollars were invested in some publicly traded stocks of India’s Adani Group via “opaque” Mauritius funds that “obscured” involvement of alleged business partners of the Adani family, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said in an article on Thursday.
Adani Group has called Hindenburg’s claims misleading and without evidence and said it always complied with laws. “It is categorically stated that all the Adani Group’s publicly listed entities are in compliance with all applicable laws including the regulation relating to public share holdings,” it told the OCCRP, according to the news article.Adani Group did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the OCCRP report.The Hindenburg report hit hard Gautam Adani, the billionaire who leads the ports-to-energy conglomerate and was until January the world’s third-richest person.
The regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India , did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the OCCRP report. “The question of whether this arrangement is a violation of the law rests on whether Ahli and Chang should be considered to be acting on behalf of Adani ‘promoters,’ a term used in India to refer to the majority owners of a business,” OCCRP said.