“PM should come out clean on Adani”: Rahul Gandhi ahead of third Opposition bloc meet demands JPC

Ahead of the third Opposition bloc meeting in Mumbai, on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi in a press conference highlighted foreign newspapers reporting on Adani Group’s alleged fraudulent activities.

Quoting The Guardian articles ‘Wealthy Indian family with links to Modi’ and ‘Modi-linked Adani family secretly invested in own shares, documents suggest’ and Financial Times article ‘Secret paper trail reveals hidden Adani investors,’ he said that a billion dollars were sent out from India, “circulated in different places,” and brought back to India. “Whom does this money belong to? Adani or someone else?” questioned Rahul Gandhi.

Quoting The Guardian, he stated that, “Adani had invested in his own shares to inflate the share prices. He then used this money to buy Indian infrastructures such as ports and airports. These newspapers have said that they have proof like documents, paper trails and internal emails.”

Highlighting the upcoming G20 meet, he said, “We are trying to show the world that we are a transparent economy, we have a level playing field and we do not have corruption. Such incidents ruin India’s image in front of the world. Why a person close to the PM is allowed free reign? Why is the PM not forcing an investigation? Why don’t agencies like CBI and ED research into this matter? India’s reputation is on the line.” He added, “The Prime Minister should create a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to do a full-scale investigation on Adani.”

He also stated that the “mastermind” behind this was Vinod Adani, Gautam Adani’s brother. He added that one Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and a Chinese national Chang Chung-Ling were also involved in this.

He questioned why a foreign national was “allowed to play with the valuation of one of the companies that controls almost all of Indian infrastructures.” He emphasized that this was an issue of National Security since the Adani group deals with high-security infrastructures such as airports, ports, etc. He called for the Prime Minister to launch an investigation into the Adani Group.

Highlighting the clean chit given to Mr. Adani by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), he said that the person in charge of the investigation that was launched against the Adani group has now been appointed as a Director of the news channel NDTV. Gautam Adani currently owns 64.71% of NDTV. Former SEBI chairman Upendra Kumar Sinha was appointed as an Independent Director at NDTV in March 2023. Rahul Gandhi called this “institutional capture.” “It is pretty clear that no investigation took place… because the Prime Minister did not want an investigation to take place,” alleged Gandhi.

Adani Group founder Gautam Adani became India’s richest person and the world’s third richest person in 2022, being worth more than $120 billion. The Guardian report ‘Modi-linked Adani family secretly invested in own shares, documents suggest’ referred to a January 2023 report published by the financial research firm Hindenburg. The report accused the Adani group of pulling off the “largest con in corporate history.” The report accused the group of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, alleging the use of offshore companies to buy its own shares, thus driving up the valuation of the conglomerate.

The group, however, had denied Hindenburg’s claims, calling its research a “calculated attack on India.”

Financial Times article ‘Secret paper trail reveals hidden Adani investors’ dated August 31 identified Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling as “associates” of Vinod Adani. According to the Financial Times, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli is from the United Arab Emirates and Chang Chung-Ling is from Taiwan. The article states that the investments were overseen by a Vinod Adani employee, which raises questions as to whether these were frontmen used to bypass rules for Indian companies meant to prevent share price manipulation.