New Delhi:

Jai Anant Dehadrai, the lawyer who last year accused a Trinamool MP of accepting bribes to ‘target’ the Adani Group, reacted Thursday to news Hindenburg Research – the United States-based short seller that alleged, with no apparent evidence, financial impropriety by the business giant – will be disbanded.

In a lengthy post on X this morning, Mr Dehadrai also linked Hindenburg shutting down to the return of Donald Trump as the US President on January 20; earlier an influential member of Mr Trump’s party had called out a decision by the outgoing government, led by Joe Biden, to probe certain Adani firms.

Mr Dehadrai also hit out at the Trinamool leader – labelling the person a “crooked puppet who tried spinning a conspiracy-theory (around Hindenburg’s allegations), particularly against the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi)”, and demanded the MP be “subjected to rigorous custodial inquiry”.

“With Hindenburg shutting down mere days before Trump takes office, the message couldn’t be clearer: the attacks on Prime Minister Modi, the Adani Group, and India’s stock market regulator (the Securities and Exchange Board of India) were not just about profit – they were part of a calculated and synchronised effort to sow instability in India,” Mr Dehadrai alleged.

“But here’s where it gets truly interesting. With (Hindenburg founder) Nate Anderson now fully exposed and in retreat – who were the crooked puppets in India who tried spinning a conspiracy-theory around the above mentioned entities?”

With Hindenburg shutting down mere days before Trump takes office, the message couldn’t be clearer: the attacks on Prime Minister Modi @narendramodi, the Adani Group @gautam_adani, and India’s stock market regulator @SEBI_India were not just about profit—they were part of a…

— Jai Anant Dehadrai (@jai_a_dehadrai) January 16, 2025

“Will the former MP who orchestrated many of these attacks in India, particularly against the Prime Minister, be fully investigated and subjected to a rigorous custodial inquiry and global financial audit?” he continued, claiming, “The money-trail from this individual will lead to some of the most notorious criminal entities to have ever existed – worldwide.”

Earlier today, Mr Anderson, in a note on Hindenburg’s website, said the company would be shut down after completion of pending projects. The announcement comes days before Mr Trump is to take office. However, Mr Anderson claimed no threat in the decision to close his firm.

READ | US Short Seller Hindenburg, Which Targeted Adani Group, To Shut

In 2022, Hindenburg Research made multiple allegations of financial impropriety by the Adani Group. The charges were firmly and completely denied by the company, which trashed them as “nothing but lies” and called them “calculated attacks on India and the Indian economy”.

READ | Adani Group Refutes Hindenburg Allegations, Calls It “Attack On India”

Later the Supreme Court gave both the Adani Group and SEBI a clean chit.

READ | Supreme Court Backs Clean Chit To Adani Group In Hindenburg Row

The allegations were recycled in August last year.

They were once again firmly dismissed; the business behemoth’s chairman, Gautam Adani, slammed the “dual assault targeting our financial stability and pulling us into a political storm”. “It was a calculated move,” he said.

READ | Adani Group, SEBI Chief, Industry Leaders Slam “Discredited” Hindenburg

Hindenburg also targeted SEBI chief Madhavi Puri Buch and her husband, both of whom called the allegations an “attempt at character assassination”. This was after the markets’ regulator flagged what it said were violations by Hindenburg and its sole owner, Mr Anderson.

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Representational image
| Photo Credit: AMIIT DAVE

Shares of Adani group stocks fell on Thursday after a report from investigative reporting platform OCCRP alleged hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded group stocks through Mauritius-based ‘opaque’ investment funds managed by partners of promoter family of billionaire Gautam Adani.

The conglomerate denied the charges vehemently.

On the BSE, the stock of Adani Green Energy nosedived 4.43% to ₹927.65 apiece, with a market capitalisation of ₹1.47 lakh crore.

The scrip of Adani Power plunged 3.82% to ₹315.85, flagship firm Adani Enterprises declined 3.56% to ₹2,424 and Adani Energy Solutions fell 3.18% to ₹814.95 apiece on the bourse.

Shares of ACC dipped 3.15% to ₹1,937.10 and Ambuja Cements fell 2.84% to ₹431.60.

In the morning session, the 30-shares BSE Sensex was trading 38.32 points or 0.06% lower at 65,048.93 points.

The fresh allegations by an organisation funded by likes of George Soros and Rockefeller Brothers Fund come months after a US short seller wiped away close to $150 billion in value of Adani group stocks with allegations of accounting fraud, stock price manipulation and improper use of tax havens by the ports-to-energy conglomerate run by billionaire Gautam Adani. Adani Group has denied all Hindenburg allegations.

Citing review of files from multiple tax havens and internal Adani Group emails, OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) said its investigation found at least two cases where the “mysterious” investors bought and sold Adani stock through such offshore structures.

The two men, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling, who OCCRP claimed have longtime business ties to the Adani family and have also served as directors and shareholders in Group companies and firms associated with Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani, “spent years buying and selling Adani stock through offshore structures that obscured their involvement – and made considerable profits in the process.”

The documents “show that the management company in charge of their investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advice them in their investment”, it alleged.

Adani in a statement categorically rejected what it called as “recycled allegations”, calling them “yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report”.

“These 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. 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 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,” it said.