Tax havens. Fraud allegations. Legal breaches. Corruption investigations. Human rights abuses. Pollution. Secrecy. Hounding journalists. Pursuing community members.
Adani is trying to win back investors’ confidence after being accused of the “largest con in corporate history”. But you can’t trust a word Adani says. Here’s 10 of Adani’s biggest lies.
10 BIG ADANI LIES
10. Adani lies by manipulating its own Wikipedia entries!
Yep, seriously.
Feb 2023 Adani Group manipulated entries, claims Wikipedia.
Can you really trust a company that manipulates its own Wikipedia entries!?
(Source: The Times of India)
8. Adani lies about its environmental track record
In recent years Adani has pumped out a lot of misleading greenwash to try and present itself as a sustainable company. At the same time it has been destroying large areas of old-growth forest for coal and becoming the biggest proponent of new coal in the world after Coal India.
Adani’s hypocrisy is perhaps best summed by these actual back-to-back tweets from Gautam Adani.
(Source: @Gautam_Adani on Twitter)
7. Adani lies about breaking the law
Feb 2020: Adani was caught lying about clearing bushland at the Carmichael coal mine and was found guilty of providing false and misleading information to the Queensland government.
6. Adani lies about the size of its Carmichael coal mine
The group has made many contradictory and misleading statements about the size of Carmichael, often changing its story depending on which audience it’s addressing.
For example,
In 2021, Adani told major investor Vanguard “they had capped the size of the (Carmichael) mine & intended to set an end date for operations to fit within the parameters of a 1.5°C warming scenario."
(Source: Vanguard 2021 Investment Stewardship Report)
Then in 2022 Adani said they wanted to expand Carmichael to 25-30 million tonnes per annum within a few years, making it Australia’s biggest coal mine.
(Source: Adani Enterprise Q4FY22 Earnings call.)
5. Adani lies about the role of Vinod Adani in the family business
January 2023: The Hindenburg Report exposed dozens of offshore shell companies connected to Gautam Adani’s half-brother Vinod Adani. In its response to Hindenburg, Adani said, “Vinod Adani does not hold any managerial position in any Adani listed entities or their subsidiaries & has no role in their day to day affairs”.
March 2023: Adani said, “ Vinod Adani is part of the ‘promoter group’ of various listed entities within Adani group”.
This U-turn came after media investigations revealed Vinod Adani’s essential role in many of Adani’s biggest deals. Including that a major defence contract went to an unknown Mauritius-based entity owned by Vinod Adani, and that Ambuja Cements and ACC were actually acquired by an entity controlled by Vinod, not by any of Adani’s listed subsidiaries, as Adani had previously told shareholders.
(Sources: Adani Hindenburg response, The Wire, The Morning Context, The Indian Express, Business Today)
4. Adani lies about its coal expansion
August 2020: Adani's CFO said coal was “becoming an increasingly insignificant part of the group’s portfolio” and Adani was not interested in taking part in domestic coal auctions. Adani went on to make the highest number of bids of any company and has bought at least 12 coal mines through the domestic coal auctions they said they would not participate in. Adani is now the biggest private developer of new coal in the world.
3. Adani lies about its finances
March 2023: During an investor roadshow Adani’s CFO reportedly told investors they're engaging with ratings agencies and "in all of those fronts, all our scores remain the same." The same article contains a list of several ratings agencies that've downgraded Adani or are in the process of reviewing their ratings.
March 2023: Adani reportedly told investors that all its share-backed loans had been prepaid. On the same day a State Bank of India filing showed Adani was using more shares from Adani Green as collateral for a loan to Adani Enterprises.
2. Adani lies about Adani Green being “green”
Adani has used its renewables business to greenwash its destructive coal expansion and access new forms of finance.
But a February 2023 filing from the State Bank of India revealed Adani was using Adani Green shares as collateral for a $300M loan to its Carmichael coal mine.
The idea that Adani companies are separate from each other is fiction - all Adani companies are controlled by the Adani family, and Adani shuffles money between its various entities. Meaning that even investments in Adani Green risk funding Adani’s coal expansion. As Hindenburg warned.
“In addition to using offshore capital to park stock, we found numerous examples of offshore shells sending money through onshore private Adani companies onto listed public Adani companies. The funds then seem to be used to engineer Adani’s accounting (whether by bolstering its reported profit or cash flows), cushioning its capital balances in order to make listed entities appear more creditworthy, or simply moved back out to other parts of the Adani empire where capital is needed.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
NUMBER 1!
1. Adani lies about working with human rights abusers
4 May 2023: Adani proposed coal ventures to sanctioned Myanmar military despite public vow to cut ties, leaked documents show (Source: ABC News)
March 2021: Adani ‘categorically denied’ engaging with Myanmar's military before photo and video evidence emerged of Adani Ports CEO Karan Adani meeting with the junta’s top general and even exchanging gifts.
Can you send a message to Adani's big investors demanding they stop funding Adani's coal?
We simply can’t trust Adani to do the right thing by the law, the community or the environment.
From pollution disasters to seizing land from vulnerable communities in India, working with a military dictatorship in Myanmar and bankrupting Traditional Owners in Australia, the Adani Group’s dodgy and dangerous practices are more than a track record. They are the way they do business.
Since starting operations in Australia, Adani has:
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Breached its environmental approval condition seven times, including illegally clearing wildlife habitat on the route of its rail line without conducting wildlife surveys.
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Been caught out lying about clearing bushland at the Carmichael coal mine and been found guilty of providing false and misleading information to the Queensland government.
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Been exposed for working with military-controlled companies in Myanmar who fund the activities of the brutal military regime. Adani ‘categorically denied’ engaging with Myanmar's military before photo and video evidence emerged of Adani Ports CEO Karan Adani meeting with the junta’s top general and exchanging gifts.
- Been forced to pay out $100M to four customers of its Abbot Point coal port after a Supreme Court judge found Adani had engaged in 'unconscionable conduct' and dishonest behaviour to exploit its customers.
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Fuelled human rights abuses and environmental destruction in Godda, India, where Adani is displacing thousands of indigenous Adivasi people to build a new coal fired power plant and burn coal from the Carmichael mine.
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Breached a pollution licence by 800%, allowing polluted, coal-laden water to spew out of its Abbot Point coal port and into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.
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Been caught out in court exaggerating the benefits of their coal project, admitting it would create 1464 jobs not the 10,000 promised and $4.8 billion not $22 billion in royalties.
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Used their “attack dog” legal strategy to bankrupt Traditional Owner Adrian Burragubba, and pursue community member Ben Pennings in the courts after sending private investigators to follow his family and photograph his daughter on her way to school.
- Adani’s unscrupulous practices in India and links to corporate tax havens in the Cayman and British Virgin Islands were exposed in a detailed investigation by ABC’s Four Corners, building on an investigative report linking Adani with corruption investigations, fraud allegations, pollution incidents, mistreatment of local communities, deaths at work sites, and exploitation of workers.
