"This is rife with conflict of interest"
The company owned by Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani has issued a detailed response to the fraud allegations made by Hindenburg Research.
In a document that is more than 400 pages, Adani Group said the report is a “calculated attack on India”.
Hindenburg said “Adani failed to specifically answer 62 of our 88 questions” that were detailed in its report.
As a result of the allegations, the conglomerate had more than £40.4 billion wiped off its stock market value.
Adani Group also said it had complied with all local laws and had made the necessary regulatory disclosures.
It said: “All transactions entered into by us with entities who qualify as ‘related parties’ under Indian laws and accounting standards have been duly disclosed by us.”
It also accused the Hindenburg report of being intended to allow the firm to book gains, without citing evidence.
Adani Group added: “This is rife with conflict of interest and intended only to create a false market in securities to enable Hindenburg, an admitted short seller, to book massive financial gain through wrongful means at the cost of countless investors.”
In response, Hindenburg said:
“To be clear, we believe India is a vibrant democracy and an emerging superpower with an exciting future.”
“We also believe India’s future is being held back by the Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”
It comes as Adani Enterprises is pushing ahead with a £2 billion share offering in India.
Hindenburg Research published a report which accused the group of “pulling the largest con in corporate history”.
Hindenburg said it spent two years on its investigation.
It claimed that the Adani Group had “engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”.
Among the allegations include that a relative of Adani used offshore entities to launder money into the group’s listed companies, contributing to their “sky-high valuations” after an increase in stock prices over the past three years.
Hindenburg also questioned the alleged high amounts of leverage in the group’s entities.
Adani Group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh rejected the allegations, calling them “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations”.
On January 19, 2023, Adani Group said it was looking at “remedial and punitive action” against Hindenburg Research in the US and India.
Adani said it had always been “in compliance with all laws”.
Hindenburg responded to Adani’s comments, saying the company had not addressed “a single substantive issue we had raised”.
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