Adani Rejects Allegations by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

By P.R. Venkat and Fabiana Negrin Ochoa

Indian conglomerate Adani Group on Thursday rejected news reports that quoted documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project that said the billionaire family secretly invested hundreds of millions of dollars into India's stock market to buy its own shares.

"These news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid...to revive the meritless Hindenburg report," Adani Enterprises, the group's flagship company, said in a stock-exchange filing.

It said the latest claims are based on closed cases from a decade earlier when India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence probed allegations of overinvoicing, transfer of funds abroad, related party transactions and investments through foreign portfolio investments.

"An independent adjudicating authority and an appellate tribunal had both confirmed that there was no overvaluation and that the transactions were in accordance with applicable law," Adani Enterprises said, adding that the Supreme Court of India ruled in favor of the company in March.

Earlier this year, shares in Adani companies took a beating after U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research accused the conglomerate of wide-ranging fraud, including practicing accounting fraud and manipulating its stock prices through shell companies. Adani denied the allegations.

The Hindenburg report became a political issue, and the country's Supreme Court opened a probe into the market unrest and appointed a panel that said in May that it wasn't possible to conclude that there had been a regulatory failure around the allegations of price manipulation.

As India's top court and the Securities and Exchange Board of India oversee these matters, "it is vital to respect the ongoing regulatory process," Adani Enterprises said.

"We have complete faith in the due process of law and remain confident of the quality of our disclosures and corporate governance standards. In light of these facts, the timing of these news reports is suspicious, mischievous, and malicious - and we reject these reports in their entirety."

The OCCRP describes itself as an investigative reporting platform for a worldwide network of independent media centers and journalists.

Write to P.R. Venkat at venkat.pr@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 31, 2023 03:19 ET (07:19 GMT)

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