Review petition filed against Supreme Court's Adani-Hindenburg judgment

14 Feb 2024 , 11:32 AM

One of the petitioners in the Adani-Hindenburg case, Anamika Jaiswal, has submitted a review of the Supreme Court’s ruling from January 3 that rejected the creation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the claims made against the Adani group.

According to the copy of the petition, which argues that the verdict contains mistakes and that Jaiswal’s attorney, Prashant Bhushan, has new information that would persuade the court to rescind its ruling.

The plea contested the court’s ruling that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had fulfilled its regulatory obligations, arguing that there were numerous occasions in which SEBI’s shortcomings were easily noticeable. Eventually, these mistakes have been linked to suspected legislative and regulatory infractions.’

The argument states that SEBI’s 2018 and 2019 modifications to the Foreign Portfolio Investor (FPI) Regulations significantly and consistently weakened them. The plea read as follows: ‘In its status report, SEBI merely updated the completeness or incompleteness of 24 investigations; it withheld any information regarding the conclusions reached or the steps taken. Without making the results of SEBI investigations available to the public, it is impossible to infer that there hasn’t been any regulatory failure.’

According to the plea, the Supreme Court disregarded a letter from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) indicating that Adani was investing siphoned-out funds into Indian group equities by over- and under-invoicing from tax havens.

According to the petition, ‘The Supreme Court failed to appreciate that while issue of over-invoicing may not have been proved, the aspect of Adani promoters investing in Adani group stocks in Indian stock market, has never been investigated and calls for thorough probe.’

Nearly a year after Hindenburg Research released a study, the conglomerate was relieved on January 3 when the Supreme Court denied a request to transfer the inquiry into claims of securities law crimes by Adani group firms to a special investigative team.

The bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud declared that it was not allowed to meddle in SEBI’s affairs. Additionally, the court rejected concerns of conflict of interest against the panel it had established in March 2023 to investigate the claims contained in the Hindenburg report. The court also ordered the government and SEBI to investigate whether local laws were broken by stock short sales that followed the Hindenburg report.

American short-seller Hindenburg Research accused power-to-port conglomerate of ‘brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud’ in January 2023. The Adani group refuted the charges.

The top court established an expert group in March to investigate the claims and provide recommendations for improving the regulatory environment in response to a series of public interest lawsuits (PILs) requesting an investigation into the allegations.

For feedback and suggestions, write to us at [e-mail]