Congress rakes up Adani issue, says PM Modi’s exhortations at previous G20 meetings were ‘laughable’

Shubhadeep Choudhury

New Delhi, September 9

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being involved in “high-level corruption”, Congress on Saturday said the PM has facilitated the creation of Modi-made Monopolies (3M) for his close friends the Adanis in critical sectors like ports, airports, power and roads using all the tools at his disposal.

“He (Modi) has systematically blocked all investigations into Adani’s wrongdoing by agencies as varied as SEBI, CBI, ED, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, ensuring that tax havens are safe for his close friends and that they continue to enjoy the protection of excessive banking secrecy and complex international regulations”, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a statement.

Noting that the 2023 summit meeting of the G20 countries began in New Delhi, Ramesh said it is worth recalling PM Modi’s many exhortations at previous G20 summits for the international community to crack down on corruption and money-laundering.

At the 2018 Buenos Aires G20 summit, Modi even presented a nine-point agenda “for action against fugitive economic offences and asset recovery”.

Describing the PM’s exhortations as “laughable”, Ramesh said  the revelation that at least two opaque funds that are alleged to have done round-tripping, money-laundering and to have violated securities laws are directly connected to Adani is the most recent example of how agencies have been made subservient to the Adanis’ and the PM’s corporate interests.

“No less a body than the Supreme Court’s Expert Committee noted in its damning report how SEBI had itself deleted the requirement for overseas funds to report their actual ownership, something that it belatedly tried to undo in June 2023 when it reintroduced reporting requirements, long after the Adani horse had bolted”, Ramesh said and asked, “would it have done so without pressure from the top”?

Ramesh said SEBI deleted the requirements long after the departure of UK Sinha, who joined the board of the Adani-owned NDTV after having previously failed to act on a DRI investigation on Adani, indicative of a broader conspiracy.

The PM’s “nine-point agenda” is equally laughable given the ease with which the BJP permitted economic offenders like Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Mehul “Bhai” Choksi and Vijay Mallya to flee the country, Ramesh said.

“The government itself has admitted that it has been able to bring back only two of 72 major economic offenders in recent years”, the Congress leader said.

The G20 slogan is “One Earth, One Family, One Future”. However the PM seems to actually believe in “One Man, One Government, One Business Group”, Ramesh said hinting at Prime Minister Modi’s alleged close ties with the Adani Group.