'Come clean on stake in Adani's fund while in office'

New Delhi : Continuing its broadside against Sebi chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch, US short-seller Hindenburg Research has asked her to come clean on the clients of a consulting firm in which she held stake even while being in office. Hours after Madhabi and her husband, Dhaval issued a statement calling Hindenburg's latest tirade as an attack on the credibility of Sebi and attempted "character assassination", Hindenburg in a series of posts on X said their response includes several important admissions and raised numerous new critical questions.

"Buch's response now publicly confirms her investment in an obscure Bermuda/Mauritius fund structure, alongside money allegedly siphoned by Vinod Adani. She also confirmed the fund was run by a childhood friend of her husband, who at the time was an Adani director," it said.

Hindenburg had on Saturday alleged that the Buchs opened an account in 2015 with a wealth management firm in Singapore to invest undisclosed sum of money in a Mauritius-registered offshoot of a Bermuda-based fund.

The Mauritian fund was run by an Adani director and its ultimate parent was the vehicle used by two Adani associates to round-trip funds and inflate stock prices. Hindenburg also alleged that she held 100 per cent interest in a Singaporean consulting firm, Agora Partners from April 2017 to March 2022 while she was a whole-time member in Sebi. She passed on the shares to her husband two weeks after her appointment as the Sebi chairperson.

While the opposition parties led by Congress have used the Hindenburg allegations to demand a probe by a joint parliamentary committee, the BJP claimed that anti-Modi billionaire investor George Soros was invested in Hindenburg and its report was aimed at weakening the Indian economy and destroying investment in the country. Some saw Hindenburg attack on Buch as an immediate fallout of the June 27 show-cause notice Sebi sent to the US firm, founder Nathan Anderson, as well as New York-based hedge fund manager Mark Kingdon and his Kingdon Capital Management, for allegedly violating Indian laws while profiting from the fall in Adani shares last year.