6 of 8 funds used to invest in Adani shut

Early move would have helped Sebi’s stock-manipulation probe

- Varun Sood Pavan

 

Six of the eight Bermuda and Mauritius-based public market funds alleged to have been used by people with ties to the Adani Group for buying shares of the conglomerate's listed companies, have been shut, according to regulatory filings in these countries accessed by Mint, posing a challenge for the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in determining the ultimate beneficiaries of these investment vehicles.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a global network of investigative journalists, recently reported that people with ties to the Adani family secretly held significant stakes in group entities in possible violation of the country's law on maximum ownership by promoters in listed entities, through some of these funds.

Coincidentally, the closure of some of these funds-two Mauritius-based funds were shuttered last year, and a third is in the process of winding up-follows the initiation of an investigation by the markets regulator into offshore entities' holdings in Adani group companies in 2020.

The developments suggest that an early move by Sebito investigate the now-shuttered entities would have helped the regulator determine whether they played a role in manipulating Adani group stocks. With the closure of these funds, Sebi now faces increased difficulty in accessing information regarding the ultimate beneficiaries of these entities.

At least two regulatory experts said that the closure of such publicly pooled funds in a relatively short time is surprising, given that typically, they have longer lifespans.