Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi and Simon Goodley in London
A billionaire Indian family with close ties to the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, secretly invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the Indian stock market, buying its own shares, newly disclosed documents suggest. According to offshore financial records seen by the Guardian, associates of the Adani family may have spent years discreetly acquiring stock in the Adani Group’s own companies during its meteoric rise to become one of India’s largest and most powerful businesses.
By 2022, its founder, Gautam Adani, had become India’s richest person and the world’s third richest person, worth more than $120bn (£94bn). In January, a report published by the New York financial research firm Hindenburg accused the Adani Group of pulling off the “largest con in corporate history”.
It alleged there had been “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”, and the use of opaque offshore companies to buy its own shares, contributing to the “sky high” market valuation of the conglomerate, which hit a peak of $288bn in 2022.
The Adani Group denied the Hindenburg claims, which initially wiped $100bn off the conglomerate’s market value and cost Gautam Adani his prime spot on the world rich list. At the time, the group called the research a “calculated attack on India” and on “the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions”.
Yet new documents obtained by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and shared with the Guardian and the Financial Times, reveal for the first time the details of an undisclosed and complex offshore operation in Mauritius – seemingly controlled by Adani associates – that was allegedly used to support the share prices of its group of companies from 2013 to 2018.
Up until now, this offshore network had remained impenetrable. The records also appear to provide compelling evidence of the influential role allegedly played by Adani’s older brother, Vinod, in the secretive offshore operations. The Adani Group says Vinod Adani has “no role in the day to day affairs” of the company.
In the documents, two of Vinod Adani’s close associates are named as sole beneficiaries of offshore companies through which the money appeared to flow. In addition, financial records and interviews suggest investments into Adani stock from two Mauritius-based funds were overseen by a Dubai-based company, run by a known employee of Vinod Adani. The disclosure could have significant political implications for Modi, whose relationship with Gautam Adani goes back 20 years….
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After the truth-shower 