How the Black Money Was Brought Back to India
As New Delhi gears up for the 2023 G20 summit meeting, it is worth recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s words at the November 2014 Brisbane G20 summit calling for global cooperation “to eliminate safe havens for economic offenders”, to “track down and unconditionally extradite money launderers” and to “break down the web of complex international regulations and excessive banking secrecy that hide the corrupt and their deeds”.
Thursday’s explosive revelations by The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, The Financial Times and The Guardian about the clearly brazen violations of Indian securities laws by the Adani Group and its close associates are a reminder of how hollow these words have proven.
They are a reminder of the lengths and depths 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 to intimidate the Opposition rather than to investigate wrongdoing.
The revelations also provide some answers to the more than 100 pointed questions the Congress party has asked the prime minister about his murky relationship with Adani as part of the Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) series. The prime minister continues to be silent on these questions of national interest.
Also read: 'PM Protecting Corrupt Friends': Opposition Questions Modi Govt on Allegations Against Adani Group
There is now fresh evidence linking Adani associates Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling to an effort to bypass Indian securities laws relating to minimum public shareholding that were put in place to prevent share price manipulation. Shell companies controlled by Ahli and Chang — that have been revealed to be fronts for Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod — accumulated substantial stakes in four Adani Group companies covertly and illegally. The stench of corruption around the network of Adani-linked shell companies located in opaque tax havens is only getting stronger with the money trail being established now.
The actual ownership of two of the thirteen benami shell companies that SEBI has failed to identify, despite years of “investigation”, has been revealed. But questions remain about SEBI’s role. Did the obvious conflict of interest revealed by the association of past SEBI chairpersons with the Adani Group play a role in SEBI’s inability to properly investigate these shell companies? Why did SEBI fail to disclose to the Supreme Court that the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had carried out investigations against the Adani Group in 2014, that were then closed by the Modi government in 2017?
Despite the Modi government’s best efforts, the truth will not stay suppressed forever. However, the full story about the flow of benami funds into the Adani Group, how foreign citizens came to play a role in critical national infrastructure and how Modi violated rules, regulations and norms to enrich his close friends can only be revealed by a JPC.
Jairam Ramesh is a leader of the Congress party.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
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