Hindenburg claims SEBI chief had stake in offshore funds tied to ‘Adani scandal’
In its latest report released on Saturday, Hindenburg alleged that whistleblower documents revealed SEBI Chair Madhabi Buch and her husband held stakes in ‘obscure’ offshore funds implicated in the ‘Adani money siphoning scandal’.
“We had previously noted Adani’s total confidence in continuing to operate without the risk of serious regulatory intervention, suggesting that this may be explained through Adani’s relationship with SEBI Chairperson, Madhabi Buch,” the US short-seller claimed in its report.
“What we hadn’t realized: the current SEBI Chairperson and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had hidden stakes in the exact same obscure offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds, found in the same complex nested structure, used by Vinod Adani,” Hindenburg added.
The report also claims to highlight the difficulties faced by SEBI in responding to requests from the Indian Supreme Court for an investigation into the Adani issue.
“If SEBI really wanted to find the offshore fund holders, perhaps the SEBI chairperson could have started by looking in the mirror. We find it unsurprising that SEBI was reluctant to follow a trail that may have led to its own chairperson,” Hindenburg said.
Notably, the Supreme Court asked market regulator SEBI to complete its investigation and set up a separate expert panel to look into regulatory lapses based on Hindenburg’s report in 2023. The panel did not give any adverse report on Adani, and the apex court too stated that no probe other than the one being done by SEBI was required.
“In brief, despite the existence of thousands of mainstream, reputable onshore Indian mutual fund products, an industry she is now responsible for regulating, documents show SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband had stakes in a multi-layered offshore fund structure with minuscule assets, traversing known high-risk jurisdictions, overseen by a company with reported ties to the Wirecard scandal, in the same entity run by an Adani director and significantly used by Vinod Adani in the alleged Adani cash siphoning scandal,” the Hindenburg report claimed.
“We suspect SEBI’s unwillingness to take meaningful action against suspect offshore shareholders in the Adani Group may stem from Chairperson Madhabi Buch’s complicity in using the exact same funds used by Vinod Adani, brother of Gautam Adani,” the report claimed.