Adani family's partners used 'opaque' funds to invest in its stocks: OCCRP
Adani Group via «opaque» Mauritius funds that «obscured» involvement of alleged business partners of the Adani family, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said in an article on Thursday.
Citing review of files from multiple tax havens and internal Adani Group emails, nonprofit media organization OCCRP said its investigation found at least two cases where the investors bought and sold Adani stock through such offshore structures.
The OCCRP article comes after U.S.-based short-seller Hindenburg Research in January accused Adani Group of improper business dealings, including the use of offshore entities in tax havens such as Mauritius from where it said certain offshore funds «surreptitiously» owned stock in Adani's listed firms.
Adani Group has called Hindenburg's claims misleading and without evidence and said it always complied with laws.
Days following the January report though, Adani group stocks lost $150 billion in market value and remain down around $100 billion following a recovery in recent months after it repaid some debt and regained some investor confidence.
In a statement to OCCRP, Adani Group said the Mauritius funds investigated by reporters had already been named in the Hindenburg report and the «allegations are not only baseless and unsubstantiated but are rehashed from Hindenburg's allegations.»
«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.
Reuters has not independently verified OCCRP's assertions.
Adani Group did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the OCCRP report.
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