In January 2023, Hindenburg published a report accusing the Adani Group of financial irregularities, leading to a significant drop in the company’s stock price. File.
| Photo Credit: VIJAY SONEJI
Rejecting the fresh allegation levied by the Hindenburg Research, the Adani Group described the the U.S.-based short seller’s report as “a recycling of discredited claims that have been thoroughly investigated, proven to be baseless and already dismissed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in January 2024.”
On Saturday, Hindenburg alleged that the chairperson of India’s stock market regulator SEBI, had a stake in obscure offshore entities used in what it alleged was ‘the Adani money siphoning scandal’. The fresh charges came almost 18 months after Hindenburg Research flagged allegations of malfeasance and stock price manipulation at the Adani group of companies, which the SEBI chief Madhabi Buch was in charge of probing.
Also read | SEBI chief Madhabi Buch, husband deny Hindenburg allegations as ‘baseless’
Citing documents from a whistleblower, Hindenburg Research alleged that Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband, Dhaval Buch, held stakes in offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds through complex structures. Weeks ahead of her appointment as a whole time SEBI member in 2017, Mr. Dhaval Buch had written to a Mauritius fund administrator to make him the “sole person authorised to operate the accounts”, Hindenburg alleged.
In a filing dated August 11, the Adani Group spokesperson informed stock exchange that its overseas holding structure is “fully transparent”, with all relevant details disclosed regularly in numerous public documents. The spokesperson said that Adani Group has “absolutely no commercial relationship with the individuals or matters mentioned in this calculated deliberate effort to malign our standing”.
The latest allegations by Hindenburg Research are malicious, mischievous, and manipulative selections of publicly available information to arrive at pre-determined conclusions for “personal profiteering with wanton disregard for facts and the law”, the Adani Group spokesperson said.
“We remain steadfastly committed to transparency and compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements.”
In January 2023, Hindenburg published a report accusing the Adani Group of financial irregularities, leading to a significant drop in the company’s stock price. The group at the time had rubbished these claims.
The Hindenburg report alleged stock manipulation and fraud by the conglomerate. The case is related to the allegations (part of a report by Hindenburg Research) that Adani had inflated its share prices. After these allegations were published, there was a sharp fall in the shares of various Adani group companies’ stocks.
In January 2024, the Supreme Court refused to transfer the probe into the allegations of stock price manipulation by the Adani group to an SIT and had directed market regulator SEBI to complete its probe into two pending cases within three months.
Earlier this year the SC also dismissed a plea seeking to review the verdict that had sought investigation by the market watchdog SEBI in the Adani-Hindenburg case.
