“In brief, despite the existence of thousands of mainstream, reputable onshore Indian mutual fund products, an industry she now is responsible for regulating, documents show SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband had stakes in a multi-layered offshore fund structure with miniscule assets, traversing known high-risk jurisdictions, overseen by a company with reported ties to the Wirecard scandal, in the same entity run by an Adani director and significantly used by Vinod Adani in the alleged Adani cash siphoning scandal,” it alleged.
It went on to cite the Supreme Court order where it was recorded that Sebi had “drawn a blank” in its investigations into who funded Adani’s offshore shareholders.
“If SEBI really wanted to find the offshore fund holders, perhaps the SEBI chairperson could have started by looking in the mirror,” it said. “We find it unsurprising that SEBI was reluctant to follow a trail that may have led to its own chairperson.”
No immediate comments were available from Sebi.
In January last year, Hindenburg Research, which in the past has shorted, or bet against, companies like electric truck maker Nikola Corp and Twitter (now X), accused Adani Group of pulling “the largest con in corporate history” by using a web of companies in tax havens to inflate its revenue and manipulate stock prices, even as debt piled up.
Though the conglomerate vehemently denied all allegations, the damning report sent the group’s shares into a free fall, wiping out over USD 150 billion in market value of the 10 listed entities at their lowest point.
Most of the 10 listed companies have since recouped the losses.
After the Hindenburg report, the Supreme Court asked market regulator Sebi to complete its investigation and set up a separate expert panel to look into regulatory lapses. The panel did not give any adverse report on Adani and the apex court too stated that no other probe other than the one being done by Sebi was required.
Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India), which had been investigating the Adani group even before Hindenburg report, last year had told a Supreme Court-appointed panel that it was investigating 13 opaque offshore entities that held between 14 per cent and 20 per cent across five publicly traded stocks of the conglomerate. It hasn’t stated if the two incomplete probes have since been completed.
“The current SEBI Chairperson and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had hidden stakes in the exact same obscure offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds, found in the same complex nested structure, used by Vinod Adani,” Hindenburg said.
