India (Common wealth) _ According to records of offshore corporate service provider Trident Trust , two of the offshore shell firms incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, listed by media as vehicles that invested in Adani stocks, are in reality tied to the Adani Group.
According to documents obtained by the OCCRP on Thursday, two men connected to Gautam Adani and his brother were using one Global Opportunities Fund in Bermuda “for a specific purpose — to amass and trade large positions in shares of the Adani Group, one of India’s largest and most politically connected private conglomerates.”
The duo – Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli of the UAE and Chang Chung-Ling of Taiwan, associates of Vinod Adani, brother of the conglomerate’s founder Gautam Adani – had their investments overseen by a Vinod Adani employee, raising questions about whether they were front men used to circumvent rules for Indian companies that prohibit share price manipulation.
New evidence has emerged linking Adani affiliates Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling to an attempt to circumvent Indian securities laws governing minimum public holdings.
According to The Indian media, whereas Ahli utilized Gulf Asia Trade and Investment Limited, Chang used Lingo Investment Limited. The Emerging India Focus Funds (Mauritius) and the EM Resurgent Fund (Mauritius) of the Global Opportunities Fund (Bermuda) invested in Adani equities via these two BVI shell firms.
According to the investigation, corporate papers obtained by The Indian Express reveal a web of networks via which office-bearers and employees of Adani enterprises controlled these two BVI shell companies.
Concurrently to the records, a month after Gulf Asia Trade and Investment Limited (BVI) was founded in May 2011, a Dubai-based Chartered Accountant business wrote to Trident Trust inquiring whether handwritten paperwork would be accepted “when they want to perform the share transfer” of the company,” According to the Indian press. According to the share transfer agreement, Ahli “desires to sell his 100% shareholding” to one Rakesh Shantilal Shah.
In 1996, Rakesh Shantilal Shah took over as director of GA International Inc (Bahamas), a firm founded by Vinod and Ranjanben Adani in 1994. Rakesh Shantilal Shah also served as a director of Adani Global FZE (Jebel Ali, Dubai) alongside Vinod Adani, according to media reports.
Lingo Investment Limited, on its day of establishment in August 2010, records show that it granted Tejal Ramanlal Desai, along with director Chang, Power of Attorney to manage bank accounts and invest in properties, securities, and so on,” the newspaper says. Tejal Desai is listed as an employee of Adani Global FZE in an order issued by the Principal Commissioner of Customs (Ahmedabad) in April 2022.
As New Delhi prepares for the G20 summit in 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words at the November 2014 Brisbane G20 summit calling for global cooperation “to eliminate safe havens for economic offenders,” “track down and unconditionally extradite money launderers,” and “break down the web of complex international regulations and excessive banking secrecy that hide the corrupt and their deeds” are worth recalling.
They serve as a reminder of the lengths to which the prime minister has gone to protect his corrupt friends and their misdeeds by rendering India’s regulatory and investigative agencies toothless, reducing them to political tools used to intimidate the opposition rather than investigating wrongdoing.
The discoveries also provide some answers to the more than 100 specific questions posed by the Congress party to the prime minister as part of the Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) series. The prime minister has remained silent on these issues of national importance.
