Adani Group faces fresh allegations on offshore funds
NEW DELHI : The Adani Group faced fresh allegations of opaque financial dealings after a global network of investigative journalists published a report alleging that the company invested millions of dollars in its own companies through secret offshore structures. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s (OCCRP’s) investigations, published by The Guardian and Financial Times, dragged down the market value of the 10 Adani group stocks by ₹35,210 crore.
Two associates of Vinod Adani, the elder brother of Adani Group founder Gautam Adani and a member of the promoter group, are alleged to have created a complex web of structures within a foreign fund based in Bermuda to trade in Adani stocks. The two individuals, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli of the United Arab Emirates and Chang Chung-Ling of Taiwan, are said to have used the Global Opportunities Fund to trade in Adani stocks without disclosing their business ties with the Adani family.
The reports also claimed that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India’s apex anti-smuggling intelligence gathering body under the finance ministry, wrote to the markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), in 2014, alerting the regulator about suspicious trading activities of these offshore entities. However, in its filings before the Supreme Court of India, Sebi said it initiated a probe against the Adani Group as late as 2020, raising questions over whether the regulator indeed probed the leads shared by DRI and the outcome of the earlier investigation.
“Sebi takes cognizance of every complaint shared with it and follows the rule book to take it to its logical conclusion," a former Sebi executive said on condition of anonymity. “I cannot share if
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