The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in a report released on Wednesday, alleged that the investments amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, were invested into publicly traded stocks of Adani Group through "opaque" funds based in Mauritius that covered the involvement of alleged business partners of the Adani family.
Based on the examination of files from several tax havens and internal Adani Group emails, OCCRP said it identified at least two instances where investors used such offshore structures to trade Adani Group stocks.
OCCRP is an investigative reporting platform for a worldwide network of independent media centres and journalists with staff on six continents. It was founded in 2006 and specialises in organised crime and corruption.
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According to the OCCRP report, two men, Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling, with close ties to the Adani family, spent years trading hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Adani Group stock. They also appeared as directors and shareholders in affiliated Adani Group companies and companies associated with one of the family’s senior members, Vinod Adani. The management company in charge of Ahli and Chung-Ling’s investments paid a Vinod Adani company to advise them on their investments.
"The question of whether this arrangement is a violation of the law rests on whether Ahli and Chang should be considered to be acting on behalf of Adani "promoters," a term used in India to refer to the majority owners of a business," the OCCRP report said.
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If so, their stake in Adani Group would increase the 75 per cent limit permitted under law for insider ownership.
According to the Guardian Report, OCCRP said Chang said he was not aware of any secret purchases of Adani Group stocks. He asked why reporters were not interested in his other investments. "We are a simple business," he added.
The OCCRP report comes after the Hindenburg Research, a US-based short seller, accused Adani Group in January of using offshore entities in tax havens like Mauritius, where it said certain offshore funds "surreptitiously" owned stakes in Adani’s listed companies.
Adani Group had called the allegations misleading and lacking evidence, asserting its consistent adherence to the law.
Following the Hindenburg report, Adani Group lost over $150 billion in market valuation and remains down around $100 billion after a recovery in recent months following the repayment of some debt and regained some investor confidence.
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