Speculations Arise Over Sucheta Dalal's Cryptic Tweet As Adani Shares Tank 20%

The three overseas funds - Albula Investment Fund, Cresta Fund, and APMS Investment Fund - together own over Rs 43,500 crore worth of shares in four Adani Group companies.

New Delhi: After the National Securities Depository (NSDL) froze the accounts of three foreign funds that have investments in the Adani Group companies, shares of Adani group tanked by 20% on early trade on Monday. Now, there are speculations that this is the result of finance journalist Sucheta Dalal's cryptic tweet from Saturday. 

As per NSDL's website, the three accounts were frozen on or before May 31st. 

The three overseas funds - Albula Investment Fund, Cresta Fund, and APMS Investment Fund - together own over Rs 43,500 crore worth of shares in four Adani Group companies. Although Dalal hasn't named anyone in her tweet, the speculations rose from the mention of foreign entities. The reason behind this freeze is not known yet, a report in the Economic Times citing top officials at custodian banks and law firms handling foreign investors mentioned that this could be because of insufficient disclosure of information regarding beneficial ownership as per the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

According to media reports, Sebi had revamped the know your customer (KYC) documentation for FPIs in line with PMLA in 2019. Funds were given time till 2020 to comply with the new norms, failing which their Demat accounts would be frozen. Under the new rules, FPIs were required to submit few additional details including disclosures on common ownership and personal details of key employees of the fund such as fund managers.  Sebi is reportedly investigating whether there has been price manipulation in Adani Group stocks, which have gained between 200% and 1000% in the past one year.

"Sebi initiated a probe in 2020 and the investigation is still ongoing," the Economics Times quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying. Sebi did not respond to ET's query on the matter.

Now netizens are comparing Sucheta Dalal's tweet to that of Elon Musk's tweet which led to the crash of cryptocurrency last month. 

Adani Group founder Gautam Adani is the 14th richest man on the planet and has become the second wealthiest person in Asia after the recent surge in group stocks. The industrial magnate's wealth has increased to $77 billion, registering a spike of $43.2 billion in 2021 till June 11, 2021. 

Sucheta Dalal is an Indian business journalist and author. She investigated a number of cases that would eventually lead to her prominence in the fields of journalism and activism. These included the Harshad Mehta scam of 1992, the Enron scam, the Industrial Development Bank of India scam, the Ketan Parekh scam in 2001. The 1992 book The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away which she co-wrote with her husband Debashish Basu has been adapted into a docu-series Scam 1992.