'We are not obscuring promoter ownership and financing,' Adani Group tells UK newspaper

Adani Group on Monday issued a rebuttal to UK's Financial Times newspaper over a report on the conglomerate's alleged reliance on offshore funding as "a mendacious, deliberate effort to attempt to paint the Adani family and the Adani Group in the worst possible light".

"Your article of 22 March 2023 “Indian Data Reveals Adani empire’s reliance on offshore funding” is, on the face of it, a mendacious, deliberate effort to attempt to paint the Adani family and the Adani Group in the worst possible light. It reveals a willingness to be selective in using publicly available facts, lazy in its approach to understanding disclosures to which your reporters were directed, and makes insinuations that are false and damaging," said Adani Group in a statement. The ports-to-power conglomerate lost $120 billion in market value since a January 24 report by Hindenburg Research accused it of improper use of offshore tax havens and stock manipulation, allegations the group has denied.

UK's Financial Times reported that almost half of conglomerate’s $5.7 billion in FDI over 5 years came from opaque overseas entities.

"A Financial Times analysis of India’s FDI remittance statistics shows offshore companies linked to the Adanis invested at least $2.6 billion in the group between 2017 and 2022, 45.4 per cent of the more than $5.7 billion it received in total FDI over the period," the report said.

The biggest investments came from two companies directly or indirectly linked to Vinod Adani, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani's elder brother, who is listed in stock exchange filings as a Cypriot national and lives in Dubai.

"Our statement to your reporter, that all the transactions about which the Financial Times inquired have been publicly disclosed, is accurate, and the story amply demonstrates that your reporters conveniently chose not to look in a meaningful way at those public disclosures. If your reporters had fully taken into account all of those filings and other disclosures, they would have been simply unable to include – with any honesty – their subjective epithets about “hard-to-scrutinise money flows”, “opaque overseas investments” and “funds of unclear provenance”," said Adani Group's flagship firm Adani Enterprises in a stock exchange filing.

Adani Group accused the financial newspaper of ignoring public disclosures. Emerging Market Investment DMCC, which states on its website that it only invests Vinod Adani’s funds, ploughed $631 million into Adani companies between 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, Mauritius-registered Gardenia Trade and Investment, which invested $782 million into Adani companies between 2021 and 2022, is directed by Emerging Market’s manager Subir Mittra, the report said.

"As publicly disclosed on 18 Jan 2021 and 23 Jan 2021, the Adani Group’s promoters raised USD 2 Bn through the sale of a 20% stake in Adani Green Energy Ltd (AGEL) to TotalEnergies of France (then Total Renewables SAS), a fact the Financial Times contemporaneously reported but chose to ignore completely in the 22 March 2023 story. Further, in Oct 2019, the promoters had raised $700 Mn through the sale of a 37.4% stake in Adani Total Gas Ltd, a fact published in an Adani press release. Again, the Financial Times chose to ignore this fact in its report, although it did publish the news at that time," said Adani.

"These funds were reinvested by promoter entities to support the growth of new business and in portfolio companies such as Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, Adani Transmission Ltd and Adani Power Ltd," Adani Group further clarified.

"The facts are easily available and transparent. They are available through relevant securities regulatory filings that were made at the time and are a matter of public record. We understand the competitive race to tear down Adani can be alluring. But we are fully compliant with securities laws and are not obscuring promoter ownership and financing. Through the creation of a misleading narrative, your story has created reputational impact on Adani Group companies. We ask you to take down the story immediately from your website," the conglomerate said.