G20 Leaders Will Ask Questions: Rahul Gandhi On New Adani Investigation

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the world will ask questions about the Prime Minister and his links with Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire industrialist and founder and Chairman of the Adani Group, whose company has been accused of stock manipulation by a recent investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was published by The Guardian and the Financial Times.

“This is a matter of national security,” Gandhi said, noting that Adani”s investments are spread across infrastructure and ports. “The G20 is going to be held in India. This is about the reputation of India. Prime Minister Modi should come clean on this.”

He demanded that the Prime Minister order an investigation into the allegations and establish a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to look into the matter. “The only reason the investigation didn”t take place is because the Prime Minister Modi didn”t want to hold an investigation,” he said while addressing the media in Mumbai. The Congress leader is in the city for a two day INDIA alliance meeting.

Exclusive documents obtained by OCCRP, a global network of investigative journalists, show how hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in publicly traded Adani stock through opaque investment funds based in the island nation of Mauritius. According to Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the documents they have investigated include files from multiple tax havens, bank records, and internal Adani Group emails, and have shed light on, “some foreign owners of publicly listed Adani Group stock are, in fact, fronts for its majority owners.”

These documents, according to the journalists’ group, have been corroborated by people with direct knowledge of the Adani Group’s business and public records from multiple countries.

However, the Adani Group, a massive conglomerate with interests in everything from airports to television stations in India and outside the country, categorically rejected the claims by the OCCRP and called them “recycled allegations”.

“These news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report. In fact, this was anticipated, as was reported by the media last week,” a statement from the Adani Group said.