The closure of Hindenburg Research does not in any way mean a clean chit for “Modani,” the Congress said on Friday, using the portmanteau word the opposition party has coined to describe what it calls a nexus between the Narendra Modi government and the Adani Group.
Hindenburg, the US investment research firm known for short-selling, and whose reports resulted in wiping out billions of dollars of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and his companies, has been shut down, its founder Nate Anderson announced Wednesday.
“The Hindenburg report of January 2023 proved serious enough to compel the Supreme Court of India to set up an Expert Committee to probe the allegation made in it against the Adani Group whose prime patron Is none other than the present Prime Minister of India,” the Congress statement said.
“However the Hindenburg report covered only one part — securities laws violations — of the hydra-headed Modani MegaScam. Out of the 100 questions on the Adani MegaScam that the Congress party had asked of the PM in the Hum Adani ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) series during January-March 2023, only 21 questions related to revelations made in the Hindenburg report.
The matter goes far deeper.
“It involves the abuse of Indian foreign policy to enrich the PM's close friends at the expense of the national interest. It involves the misuse of investigative agencies to force Indian businesspersons to divest critical infrastructure assets and help Adani build monopolies in airports, ports, defence and cement. It involves the capture of once-respected institutions such as SEBI whose discredited chairperson continues in her position despite clear evidence of conflicts of interest and financial links to Adani,” the statement said.
“It is worth noting that a SEBI investigation that the Supreme Court gave two months to present its report has conveniently dragged on for almost two years with no end in sight.
Modani may have — and it has— captured India's institutions, but criminality exposed outside the country cannot be covered up in this way,” it added.
The statement referenced the US allegations against the Adani Group.
“The US Department of Justice has accused Adani of bribing Indian officials to secure lucrative solar power contracts. The Swiss Public Prosecutors Office has frozen several Adani-linked bank accounts operated by Chang Chung-Ling and Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli that are "suspected of engaging in illicit activities, including money laundering and embezzlement" , according to a Swiss Federal Criminal Court order. As evidence of criminality has emerged, many countries have cancelled their Adani projects,” the statement said.
“Clear evidence has emerged of over-invoicing of coal imported by Adani from Indonesia, whose price mysteriously increased by 52% between being shipped out and arrival in Mundra, Gujarat. Investigations have found that 212,000 crore was syphoned out of India between 2021 and 2023 through Adani-linked trading firms.
“These, and other opaque funds totalling 220,000 crore, were used by Chang and Ahli to build benami stakes in Adani Group companies using a complex network of shell companies. And while the over-invoicing was going on, electricity prices in Gujarat, purchased from Adani Power, surged by 102%,” the Congress alleged.
“These are all serious acts of blatant favouritism and brazen criminality that can only be fully investigated by the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). Without a JPC, the already-compromised institutions of the Indian state will continue to act only to protect the powerful and the PM's friends, while India's poor and middle classes are left to fend for themselves in a deteriorating economic environment,” the party claimed.