‘Whole crony capitalism has backfired’: Mahesh Jethmalani on Adani Group-Hindenburg Row
Adani Hindenburg row: Targeting the Opposition, Senior lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani on Friday said that the whole “crony capitalism” campaign against Gautam Adani and the Adani Group has backfired. In an interview with NDTV, Rajya Sabha MP Jethmalani said those who celebrated the short-seller Hindenburg Research “hit job” on the Adani Group “have egg on their faces”.
“This whole campaign [against Adani Group] has backfired. Initially, it did seem to have some political fallout; it certainly had a market fallout on Adani Group firms’ market cap, and retail investors took a big hit. Since then the Supreme Court clean chit has come, and Adani Group companies’ shares have returned to pre-Hindenburg levels,” Jethmalani said.
On Thursday, Jethmalani posted on X (formerly Twitter) that a businessman with Chinese links commissioned the report by Hindenburg Research, which led to market crash and a significant drop in Adani Group shares in January 2023.
Jethmalani alleged that Chinese espionage agent Anla Cheng and her spouse, Mark Kingdon, engaged Hindenburg to draft the report on Adani. They utilized Kotak Mahindra Investments Limited (KMIL) to establish a trading account for the purpose of short-selling Adani stocks, resulting in significant profits from their actions. This led to a notable decline in Adani’s market capitalization, resulting in financial losses for numerous Indian retail investors.
He further claimed that their actions aimed to promote Chinese strategic interests by undermining an Indian corporate competitor. These activities were allegedly supported by the INDIA bloc under the guise of opposing “crony capitalism”.
Jethmalani claimed that Mark Kingdon, US-based businessman behind Kingdon Capital Management LLC, had hired Hindenburg to prepare a report on the Adani Group.
“Here’s a huge smoking gun in the sordid episode of the short sale of Adani shares by Hindenburg,” his post on X stated.
In the interview to NDTV, Jethmalani, when asked about the alleged Chinese links, said: “The Supreme Court has given a clean chit on a complaint by a co-host of the Congress party, except for one or two matters which are pending. So this seemed to be a hit job by China,” he said.
