The Adani Group is trying to lead the focus away from substantive issues and “instead stoked a nationalist narrative, claiming our report amounted to a calculated attack on India,” the firm said.
Hitting back at the Adani Group’s assertion that the Hindenburg report on the group is an “attack on India”, the US-based research firm has said that “India’s future is being held back by the Adani Group, which has draped itself in the Indian flag while systematically looting the nation.”
The Adani Group is trying to lead the focus away from substantive issues and “instead stoked a nationalist narrative, claiming our report amounted to a calculated attack on India,” the firm said.
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| “In terms of substance, Adani’s response only included about 30 pages focused on issues related to our report,” Hindenburg said on Adani’s response. |
“We believe that fraud is a fraud, even when it’s perpetrated by one of the wealthiest individuals in the world,” the US firm said in a scathing attack on the Adani Group. “To be clear, we believe India is a vibrant democracy and an emerging superpower with an exciting future,” it added.
On January 24, Hindenburg Research came out with a 106-page report, which accused the Adani group of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”.
“In terms of substance, Adani’s response only included about 30 pages focused on issues related to our report,” Hindenburg said on Adani’s response.
The US firm said the remainder of the response consisted of 330 pages of court records, along with 53 pages of high-level financials, general information, and details on irrelevant corporate initiatives, such as how it encourages female entrepreneurship and the production of safe vegetables.
“Our report asked 88 specific questions of the Adani Group. In its response, Adani failed to specifically answer 62 of them. Instead, it mainly grouped questions together in categories and provided generalised deflections,” the research house said.
“In other instances, Adani simply pointed to its own filings and declared the questions or relevant matters settled, again failing to substantively address the issues raised,” Hindenburg said, adding that the Adani response “opened with the sensationalistic claim that we are the Madoffs of Manhattan”.
“Adani also claimed we have committed a ‘flagrant breach of applicable securities and foreign exchange laws’. Despite Adani’s failure to identify any such laws, this is another serious accusation that we categorically deny,” it said.
“In short, the Adani Group has attempted to conflate its meteoric rise and the wealth of its Chairman, Gautam Adani, with the success of India itself,” the US firm said. “Of the few questions it did answer, its responses largely confirmed our findings, as we detail.”
“But before we get into those, we note that the core allegations of our report – focused on numerous suspect transactions with offshore entities – were left completely unaddressed,” it said.
News agencies
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