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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into reports that Adani family associates invested “hundreds of millions” in the company through opaque investment funds based in Mauritius. He questioned why central probe agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate are not “interrogating” those involved.
“India’s reputation is at stake ahead of the G20 meeting in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take action and investigate the Adani issue,” he said, as he showed copies of Financial Times and The Guardian newspapers that have reported on the issue. “Prominent global financial newspapers have raised crucial questions on the Adani matter,” Gandhi said.
Addressing a press conference in Mumbai ahead of a meeting of the INDIA Opposition bloc, Gandhi asked, “Why is PM Modi silent? Why doesn’t he get this investigated?” He said the country needed to know how is the Adani Group busying airports and ports and with whose money.
The former Congress president also questioned the role of the markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Gandhi alleged that after the Sebi clean chit to Adani Group, the market regulator’s former chief was appointed as an independent director to the board of the Adani Group-owned NDTV Ltd.
Gandhi demanded a probe into the role of two individual investors, Naseer Ali Shaban Ahli from Dubai and Chang Chung-Ling from Taiwan, who, according to the reports, have “longtime business ties” to the Adani family and used offshore structures to buy and sell Adani shares and have links with Vinod Adani, the brother of Gautam Adani.
Earlier in the day, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that “the full story about the flow of benami funds into the Adani Group, how foreign citizens came to play a role in critical national infrastructure and how the PM ‘violated rules, regulations and norms to enrich his close friends’ can only be revealed by a JPC.”
In a post on X, Ramesh said that as New Delhi gears up for the 2023 G20 summit meeting, it is worth recalling PM Modi’s words at the November 2014 Brisbane G20 summit calling for global cooperation “to eliminate safe havens for economic offenders”, to “track down and unconditionally extradite money launderers” and to “break down the web of complex international regulations and excessive banking secrecy that hide the corrupt and their deeds.”
“Today’s explosive revelations by The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Financial Times and The Guardian about the brazen violations of Indian securities laws by the Adani Group and its close associates are a reminder of how hollow these words have proven,” Ramesh said.
“They are a reminder of the lengths and depths to which the PM has gone to protect his corrupt friends and their misdeeds by rendering India’s regulatory and investigative agencies toothless, reducing them to political tools to intimidate the Opposition rather than to investigate wrongdoing,” he alleged.
The Aam Aadmi Party urged the Supreme Court to take cognisance of the “investigative report” of the OCCRP. The CPI (M) charged on Thursday that the links of the Gujarat-based business conglomerate with the PM have ensured no action against it. “The report also shows that Sebi was looking into the matter of offshore funding of Adani companies in 2014 but had closed the enquiries subsequently. The fresh evidence necessitates a serious probe, and the Supreme Court has to step in to ensure no cover-up,” the Left party said.
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