’Did a Union Minister make personal calls to save Adani FPO?’ Congress’ fresh attack on govt
- While posing a set of three questions to the government as part of the party's ‘Hum Adani ke Hain Kaun’ series, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh asked PM Modi to break his silence on the issue.
The Congress on 18 February questioned the Modi government if a Union Minister had made personal calls to five-six of the most well-known business persons to invest their personal funds in the FPO.
While posing a set of three questions to the government as part of the party's "Hum Adani ke Hain Kaun" series, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh asked PM Modi to break his silence on the issue.
He also the government as whether instructions were issued to LIC and SBI to invest in the Adani Enterprises FPO despite a drastic fall in its share price after a Hindenburg report on the conglomerate.
Under the HAHK series, the opposition party has been posing questions to the government on the Adani issue.
In the post, he claimed that among the anchor investors in the Adani Enterprises follow-on public offering (FPO) were the Life Insurance Corporation of India which bid ₹299 crore, State Bank of India Employees' Pension Fund which bid ₹99 crore, and SBI Life Insurance Company which bid ₹125 crore.
The party questioned, "These publicly owned institutions participated in the FPO despite the fact that the market price had dropped far below the issue price and that both LIC and SBI already owned large chunks of Adani Group equity. Were instructions issued to LIC and SBI to deploy the savings of crores of Indians to once again bail out the Adani Group."
In its latest set of questions to the prime minister, the Congress asked, "Is it true that a high-profile Union Minister with longstanding commercial links made personal calls to five-six of the most well-known businesspersons on behalf of Gautam Adani and asked them to invest their personal funds in the FPO to save Gautam Bhai from embarrassment? Does this not represent a conflict of interest worth investigating? Did this Union Minister act on instructions from you?"
The Congress leader also asked if the family offices that were pressured to bail out the Adani FPO given assurances that this was only to save Gautam Adani's reputation and that the FPO would be subsequently cancelled and the money returned to the investors.
"Is it not a violation of Indian securities regulations to hide this relevant information from most investors and only to share it with a select few? Is it ethical to dupe FPO investors in this way," he asked.
On 2 February, Gautam Adani said that it would not be "morally correct" to go ahead with the ₹20,000-crore share of Adani Enterprises in the current market condition, a day after deciding not to go-ahead with the fully subscribed FPO. A FPO is the issuance of shares to investors by a company listed on a stock exchange after its initial public offerings.
Hindenburg Research has accused the Adani group of “brazen" market manipulation and accounting fraud, setting off an intense selloff in the stocks. The industrialist has repeatedly denied the allegations, with his conglomerate calling the report “bogus," and threatened legal action.
Recently, Adani Group stocks had taken a beating on the bourses after the Hindenburg report made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share-price manipulation, against the business conglomerate.
The Gautam Adani-led group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements. The Congress has demanded a joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the Adani issue. The opposition party also stalled proceedings of both Houses of Parliament during the first part of the Budget Session.
Meanwhile, Billionaire financier-philanthropist George Soros while addressing the Munich Security Conference said that Prime Minister Modi's fate was ‘intertwined’ with Adani's. Opining that the PM would be ‘weakened’ by the recent stock rout, he said the current upheaval could open the door to a ‘democratic revival’ in India. “Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies. Their fate is intertwined. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards. Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in Parliament," he had asserted. On this, the BJP was quick to counter that Soros wanted to ‘destroy’ Indian democracy and wanted some "hand-picked" people to run the government.
(With inputs from PTI)
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Business NewsNewsIndia’Did a Union Minister make personal calls to save Adani FPO?’ Congress’ fresh attack on govt
First Published:19 Feb 2023, 02:07 PM IST
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