A regulatory quagmire threatens to undermine the investigation into US short seller Hindenburg Research’s accusations of shenanigans in the Gautam Adani group that shook the stock markets at the start of the year.
The investigation into l’affaire Adani stems from an alleged breach of public float rules, a skein of related party transactions and suspicions that a shadowy bunch of overseas entities were ratcheting up the stock prices of the group’s listed entities.
A six-member expert committee headed by retired Supreme Court Justice A.M. Sapre has concluded that frequent changes in securities laws since 2018 make it difficult to conclude that the Adani group had violated regulations by bringing the minimum public shareholding below the mandated threshold of 25 per cent or that it had deliberately concealed the identity of the real owners of the funds that were funnelled into the conglomerate through 13 “opaque” entities residing in various tax havens.
