Indian court rejects request for new inquiry against Billionaire Gautam Adani

• India’s supreme court dismisses request for a new panel to probe fraud allegations.
• In May, the panel reported no significant progress in the inquiry.
• The Supreme Court instructed the regulator to conclude its investigation.

India’s top court has dismissed requests to establish a new panel to probe allegations of fraud against billionaire Gautam Adani’s companies made by a US firm, Hindenburg Research, which had accused the firm of “brazen” stock manipulation and accounting fraud in January.

In March, the court established a committee to oversee India’s market regulator’s investigation into the allegations. However, in May, the panel reported that the regulator had made no significant progress in the inquiry.

The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, instructed the regulator to conclude its investigation within three months.

Gautam Adani, consistently denying any wrongdoing, expressed satisfaction that “truth had prevailed” following the court’s ruling.

Petitioners asserted that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), directed by the court to investigate the allegations, was not conducting a proper investigation.

The Chief Justice DY Chandrachud:

They also alleged a “conflict of interest” among some members in the court-appointed panel. Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, rejecting their plea, stated that there were “no grounds” for transferring the investigation to a special team and directed Sebi to conclude its investigation promptly.

“The power to transfer investigation must be exercised in exceptional circumstances. Such powers cannot be exercised in the absence of cogent justifications,” he said.

Rejecting the argument that there was a conflict of interest among members of the court-appointed panel, he added that newspaper reports and investigations by third-party organizations cannot be held as conclusive evidence to question Sebi’s findings.

Hindenburg, which specializes in “short-selling” or betting against a company’s share price in the expectation that it will fall, accused Mr. Adani of “pulling the largest con in corporate history” in its report.

The report questioned the Adani Group’s ownership of companies in offshore tax havens such as Mauritius and the Caribbean.

It also claimed Adani companies had “substantial debt” which put the entire group on a “precarious financial footing.”

The Adani Group denied the allegations, calling the report “malicious” and said that it had always been “in compliance with all laws”.

The allegations caused a meltdown in Indian markets as the Adani Group’s companies witnessed more than $100 billion (£82 billion) wiped off their market value in the weeks after the report was made public.

However, their stocks have since bounced back, experiencing a jump in price in the hours before Wednesday’s verdict.

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