SEBI Chief Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch have strongly denied the allegations made by short-seller Hindenburg Research in a joint statement issued at 1:40 AM on August 11.
“It is unfortunate that Hindenburg Research against whom SEBI has taken an Enforcement action and issued a show cause notice has chosen to attempt character assassination in response to the same,” the couple said in a joint statement.
The couple stated that the allegations are baseless and devoid of any truth.
“Our life and finances are an open book. All disclosures as required have already been furnished to SEBI over the years,” the statement added.
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The family said they have no hesitation in disclosing any and all financial documents, including those that relate to the period when they were strictly private citizens, to any and every authority that may seek them.
“Further, in the interest of complete transparency, we would be issuing a detailed statement in due course,” the statement added.
The statement comes after Hindenburg Research published a report on its website on August 10 claiming that the husband-wife duo had stakes in obscure offshore funds used to illegally siphon funds to Adani entities.
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The report cites a series of whistleblower documents to establish a link between the SEBI chief and funds based out of Mauritius and Bermuda. It also said that this could be the reason behind SEBI’s unwillingness to take meaningful action against suspect offshore shareholders in the Adani Group. In fact, on 27 June, SEBI had even sent a show cause notice to Hindenburg calling out deficiencies in the short-seller's disclosures.
According to documents released by Hindenburg, Madhabi Buch’s stake in the fund was entirely transferred to her husband Dhaval Buch’s name just weeks before her appointment as SEBI chairperson. The value of Buch’s stake in the Global Dynamic Opportunities Fund was $872,762.26 as of February 26, 2018.
The fund was well entrenched in a convoluted and highly opaque investment structure used by Vinod Adani to siphon funds to Adani entities in India. Vinod Adani is the brother of Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani.
The Hindenburg report, citing whistleblower documents, includes emails sent by Madhavi Buch from her personal address, a letter by Dhaval Buch to a fund administrator in Mauritius and details of an investment account opened by the couple in Singapore in 2015. It claimed that the Buchs appeared to have opened their account with IPE Plus Fund 1 on June 5, 2015 in Singapore. The offshore Mauritius fund is said to have been set by an Adani director through IIFL and is registered in the tax haven Mauritius.
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