The Adani saga heated up on Thursday with Congress leader and leading opposition face in India Rahul Gandhi demanding that the prime minister Narendra Modi order a parliamentary investigation into the latest allegations contained in a report by Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCPP).
India’s “global reputation is on the line”, Gandhi said, after the report, carried by London’s The Guardian and The Financial Times, alleged financial violations by the politically connected Adani family.
India’s Rahul Gandhi calls Adani Group out
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Gandhi, holding aloft a copy of The Guardian article detailing how Adani Group associates had appeared to use opaque offshore funds to secretly invest hundreds of millions of dollars into shares of their own Adani Group companies, demanded that a parliamentary investigation be ordered into the Adani Group immediately.
“Why is this one gentleman who is close to the prime minister, allowed to move [hundreds of millions] of dollars to pump up his share price and to use the money to capture Indian assets such as airports and ports, ” Gandhi asked, the Guardian reported.
Though Adani has denied any favourable treatment, since Modi was elected in 2014 the conglomerate has expanded to become one of the largest in India – with monopolies over everything from power and ports to coal and airports – and has been awarded some of the largest and most lucrative state infrastructure contracts.
Gandhi said the Adani revelations called into question the transparency and integrity of India’s financial and economic systems at a time when the country was declaring itself open for global business.
Significantly, the resurfacing of the Adani controversy comes at a wrong time for the Modi government, which is all set to hold the G20 Summit in Delhi on September 9-10, with US President Joe Biden and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, among other global leaders, in attendance.
In a statement released on Thursday morning, the Adani Group said it rejected the reports “in their entirety”. It said: “We have complete faith in the due process of law and remain confident of the quality of our disclosures and corporate governance standards.”
The Modi government so far gave no response to the allegations.
Follow us on
