Malicious, baseless: Adani group refutes research by Hindenburg

New Delhi, Jan 25: Gautam Adani-led Adani Group on Wednesday refuted allegations of corporate fraud levelled by US activist investor Hindenburg Research alleging that the report's main objective was to damage Adani Enterprise's upcoming Follow-on Public Offering.

"The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India's highest courts. The timing of the report's publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group's reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming Follow-on Public Offering from Adani Enterprises, the biggest FPO ever in India," Jugeshinder Singh, Group CFO at the Adani Group said.

"The investor community has always reposed faith in the Adani Group on the basis of detailed analysis and reports prepared by financial experts and leading national and international credit rating agencies," he added.

"Our informed and knowledgeable investors are not influenced by one-sided, motivated and unsubstantiated reports with vested interests. The Adani Group, which is India's leader in infrastructure and job creation, is a diverse portfolio of market-leading businesses managed by CEOs of the highest professional calibre and overseen by experts in various fields for several decades. The Group has always been in compliance with all laws, regardless of jurisdiction, and maintains the highest standards of corporate governance," Singh said.

The Hindenburg's report details a web of Adani-family controlled offshore shell entities in tax havens spanning the Caribbean and Mauritius to the United Arab Emirates, which it claims were used to facilitate corruption, money laundering and taxpayer theft, while siphoning off money from the group's listed companies.

"Our research involved speaking with dozens of individuals, including former senior executives of Adani Group, reviewing thousands of documents, and conducting diligence site visits in almost half a dozen countries," it said.

Hindenburg claimed to have uncovered "rudimentary efforts seemingly designed to mask the nature of some of the shell entities." "Even if you ignore the findings of our investigation and take the financials of Adani Group at face value, its 7 key listed companies have 85 per cent downside purely on a fundamental basis owing to sky-high valuations," the report said adding key listed Adani companies have also taken on substantial debt, including pledging shares of their inflated stock for loans, putting the entire group on precarious financial footing.