A News agency reports that Vinod Adani, the elder brother of Gautam Adani whose role was also questioned by short-seller Hindenburg, may be far more important in shoring up Adani’s mining project in Australia, resigned from three key companies’ .
These resignations happened just days before India’s Supreme Court ordered a committee to probe if regulators had failed to oversee Adani Group. It has been reported earlier that The Securities and Exchange Board of India is examining whether some transactions between the group and Vinod were properly disclosed.
Vinod stepped down as director of Carmichael Rail and Port Singapore, the company that acquired assets from the Adani Enterprises unit, on February 27. He also resigned as director of two subsidiaries.
These companies that Vinod resigned from were responsible for bailing out the Adani Carmichael mining project in Australia through a complex set of financial flows, around 2013 and then after 2018, through jurisdictions where public disclosure is hard to come by, Mauritius, Cayman Islands and UAE, reports the News agency. It says it has found that the money from Vinod’s companies has likely covered a significant share of Gautam’s mining project in Australia.
As Adani’s dealings come under renewed scrutiny, more so after the Hindenburg Report by a short-seller in January led to a situation where almost $120 billion in market value was wiped out, there have also been questions raised about the extent of Gautam’s elder brother Vinod’s involvement in the group. The Hindenburg report says that Vinod has played a crucial role in executing what it alleged is “the largest con in corporate history”. Adani Group, which hasn’t been charged with any crimes, has denied the accusations.
The News agency says it reviewed hundreds of pages of filings related to the Carmichael project, which is one of the group’s biggest undertakings. It finds that “the paper trail leads back to Vinod Adani”.
Vinod Adani (74) is reported to be worth at least $1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He runs a family investment office in Dubai. Over the years, he’s been involved in some of Adani Group’s most ambitious projects, “Carmichael is one of the longest-running examples,” says the agency.
As more reports alleged that Vinod played a key role in the Adani Group’s foreign deals, the conglomerate maintained that Vinod did not hold “any managerial position in any Adani listed entities or their subsidiaries and has no role in their day-to-day affairs”, but on March 16, the Group said in a statement that the Adani Group and Vinod Adani should be seen as one.
(With inputs from agencies)
