The Shady Motives behind Anti-Adani Lobbies

The controversies surrounding Adani shouldn't be ignored but the shady motives behind the incidents must be understood

Dec 15, 2024

After a break, the Adani becomes a trending topic in Indian politics. The Recent allegations against the Adani Group for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by U.S. authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), have sparked intense debates in India and abroad. The opposition parties have been quick to claim vindication over long-standing allegations of cronyism and opaque financial practices. With this the 2023 Hindenburg’s and OCCRP’s reports have also become a trending topic.

However, focusing solely on these allegations overlooks a critical reality: Adani has been instrumental in advancing India’s infrastructure and strategic goals, often taking bold risks where others hesitated. Adani has played a significant role in countering China's growing influence, especially in critical sectors and regions where Beijing has sought to expand its economic and geopolitical dominance. In doing so, Adani has gained attention from various nexus that has displeasures with his growth.

The recent charges against Gautam Adani and several associates for bribery have taken a new turn, with questions being raised about U.S. Attorney Breon Stacey Peace’s potential connections to George Soros. Peace’s spouse, Jacqueline Jones-Peace, holds a senior position at the Equal Justice Initiative—an organization tied to Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Breon Peace’s spouse, Jacqueline Jones-Peace, serves as the Director of Development and Senior Attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. EJI was founded by Bryan Stevenson, who also leads the organization as its Executive Director. Notably, Stevenson is a member of the U.S. Programs board of the Open Society Foundations, which is funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. This connection raises questions about the links between the Peace family and Soros, suggesting potential motivations for targeting the Adani Group.

Additionally, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has long-standing ties to Soros and his family, supported Breon Peace’s nomination for a judicial role and played a significant role in his appointment in 2021. Schumer has publicly aligned himself with several Soros-backed initiatives. Wealthy liberal donors, including Soros, have contributed significantly to Schumer-affiliated political causes.

Soros’ Democracy PAC II has been a notable source of financial support for Senate Democrats. On June 22, Soros donated $2.5 million to the Senate Majority PAC, bringing his contributions to the PAC to $6 million over the past three years. This includes donations of $3.5 million in 2022 and $2.5 million in 2021. In 2024 alone, Soros has contributed $16 million to the PAC, which underscores his influence on the Democrat Party initiatives.

"My guess is that Donald Trump will come in and whoever he appoints to run the Justice Department will say, what are you guys doing? Sticking your nose into Indian businesses? Spending all this money on a trial which probably won't go anywhere?"
- Mark Robius

Ace investor Mark Mobius has had dismissed the recent indictment by the US Department of Justice against Adani Group officials as a frivolous expense, suggesting that such actions will likely fade away once Donald Trump takes over as the President.

The saga of attacks on Adani started in early 2023, with a US investment research firm, Hindenburg releasing a report titled “Adani Group: How The World’s 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling the Largest Con in Corporate History”1.

The report become a hot topic in Indian politics as the report alleged that SEBI(Securities and Exchange Board of India) had launched investigations of transactions done by the Adani Group, but it had gone nowhere after over one and a half years of investigations, due to political pressure. In response, the Adani Group released a comprehensive 413-page rebuttal defending itself against the allegations.2Adani denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations “selective misinformation”, and framed the allegations as an attack on India’s growth story . Upon Supreme Court’s order SEBI conducted investigations on Adani .Few months after this, OCCRP released a report on Adani group.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is a global network of investigative journalists dedicated to exposing corruption, organized crime, and abuse of power. Founded in 2006, the organization has worked on high-profile investigations that span borders, shining a light on financial misdeeds and corporate malfeasance. With accolades for its ambitious investigative journalism, OCCRP has positioned itself as a champion of transparency and accountability.

The report, released in collaboration with global media outlets, alleged that the Adani Group had links to offshore entities involved in stock manipulation and tax evasion. These claims have sparked a media frenzy, with critics of the Indian government weaponizing the report to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, given Adani’s perceived proximity to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP reacted to this by questioning the ulterior motives of OCCRP.

To understand the agenda of OCCRP, we must look at who funds them. A recent revelation from the collaborative investigation report prepared by, Mediapart (France), Drop Site News (US), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy) and Reporters United (Greece), disclosed OCCRP received significant funding from the U.S. government. According to their report, over 50% of OCCRP's funding between 2014 and 2023 came from U.S. government agencies3. This includes not only direct grants but also "subgrants" amounting to millions of dollars, which OCCRP redistributes to its partner organizations.

The findings are eye-opening and cast serious doubts on OCCRP's claim of neutrality. Can an organization largely bankrolled by a foreign government truly maintain its independence, especially when investigating other sovereign nations? The answer is No! . Especially considering the current US govt’s displeasures with Modi administration in India.

If we monitor OCCRP’s funding, we will understand that the influence of leftist lobbies in shaping global narratives is increasingly apparent. Several well-known leftist NGOs are listed in OCCRP’s funding. Organizations like the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, Oak Foundation, and Sigrid Rausing Trust have long been criticized for promoting leftist ideologies through their funding activities.

USAID and NED are also major funders of OCCRP. These two groups are US’s toolkit to meddle with other countries internal affairs. One example is, according to a research report published by the Council of Hemispheric Affairs4, USAID interference led to the 2018 uprising in Nicaragua. An extraordinary leaked document revealed the US government’s plan to interfere with the internal affairs in Nicaragua before and after the 2021 presidential election. The 14-page extract of a much longer document outlined a contract of USAID to create “the environment for Nicaragua’s transition to democracy.” William Grigsby from Radio La Primerisima revealed the plan in the document that described how USAID worked with various NGOs, think tanks, media organisations and human rights bodies to support opposition to the Ortega government.

National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private nonprofit grantmaking organization that supports the development of “democratic institutions” around the world. Though formally private, the NED is almost entirely funded by the U.S. Congress. In 2016, the Indian government placed NED on a watch list, citing violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).

Open Society Foundations(OSF), run by George Soros is also a prominent leftist funder of OCCRP. They gave a grant of $8,00,000 (~ ₹6.61 crores) to OCCRP for ‘strengthening’ the organisation’s cross-border reporting and increasing the wider impact. Soros’s grant to OCCRP is undoubtedly an influential funding.

On February 2023, George Soros accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of doing crony capitalism. His press conference came just one month after Hindenburg published a report on Adani

On 31st August 2023, OCCRP released its report on the Adani Group. They didn’t stop there and proceed to release another in May 2024. The claims of the reports were junked by the Adani Group and also by the Mauritius-based fund ‘360 One.’

The Supreme Court of India had ruled that the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) report could not be used to cast doubt on the ongoing probe by SEBI. It stated that reliance on a third-party organisation report without any verification cannot be relied on as proof.

We cannot entirely ignore the reports of OCCRP and Hindenburg, as their findings highlighted critical questions about corporate governance and regulatory oversight in India.

However, it is important to question the shady agendas. The OCCRP's 2021 report had alleged Pegasus spyware's use against journalists and activists, including in India.

In the same year OCCRP published an article aimed at undermining the Indian vaccine Covaxin and on July 2, Congress held a press conference targeting the government and Covaxin.

The attacks on Adani are also not a new phenomenon from US Deep state, ten years ago, just few months after Narendra Modi become the prime minister, Intelligence Bureau of India (IB), submitted a classified document identifying several foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that were “negatively impacting economic development”.5

“A significant number of Indian NGOs (funded by some donors based in the US, the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries) have been noticed to be using people-centric issues to create an environment which lends itself to stalling development projects… the negative impact on GDP growth is assessed to be 2–3 percent per annum,” said the IB report marked to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

The 21-page report identified seven sectors and projects that had stalled because of NGO-created agitations against nuclear power plants, uranium mines, coal-fired power plants, farm biotechnology, mega industrial projects, hydroelectric plants, and extractive industries.

At the end of April 2015, India cancelled the registration of nearly 9,000 foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Green peace was one among the organisation that lost their license.

Greenpeace is one of the most internationally recognized environmentalist organization in the world. Greenpeace Fund, Inc. is the non-profit 501(c)(3) arm associated with Greenpeace. It raises money to support the operations and the mission of Greenpeace. It also engages in public education and makes grants in order to support their environmentalist agenda.

Greenpeace is not merely an environmentalist group. It also does political advocacy.

The leaked John Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016 revealed that U.S.-based philanthropic organizations, such as the Sandler Foundation, financially supported Australian environmental groups like the Sunrise Project. These groups campaigned against Adani's Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, Australia, which has been a controversial project due to environmental concerns.

The emails disclosed that these organizations provided strategic advice and financial incentives to indigenous communities opposing the mine. The Sunrise Project reportedly collaborated with groups like Greenpeace and 350.org to influence local decisions against Adani's operations. Adani's CEO responded by characterizing these activities as part of a "foreign-funded" campaign to derail coal mining projects in Australia.

350.org is allied with The Bob Brown’s foundation, who is the mastermind of the “Stop Adani campaign”.

Bob Brown Foundation launched the Adani Watch website to run a smear campaign by distorting the facts on Adani’s mining and other industrial activities.

Despite claiming to be climate activists, the Foundation does not target any other corporate group with business interests in the extractive industries.

Capitalistic Man — an Australian blog providing independent investment analysis of ASX and International Companies, conducted a deep-dive study on ASX-listed coal miners.

Australia’s top five largest coal miners are BHP, Glencore, Yancoal, Anglo American, Peabody Energy, and Whitehaven Coal. The vast majority of thermal and metallurgical coal produced in Australia is exported to Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, and South East Asia by these companies.

But for Bob Brown Foundation, Adani is their sole target. Over time the campaign’s true face started to get exposed.

In 2023, When BBC released a controversial documentary titled, “India: The Modi Question”, the Bob Brown Foundation has retweeted Kenneth Roth’s tweet regarding this. What does an environmental protection organisation have to do with this topic?

They also regularly collaborate with certain Indian journalists who periodically write against the incumbent Modi government. Ravi Nair, Nihar Gokhale, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, and Prashant Bhushan have often acted in tandem with Stop Adani to distort facts and spread half-truths.

The source of the Bob Brown Foundation’s funding is hidden in layers and layers of deception. The Foundation has never revealed its source of donations and where they use those funds.

The Foundation had reportedly violated the Australian Charities Act of 2013 by asking people to ‘vote the Greens’, a political party which Bob Brown represented between 1989 and 2012. 6

The Australian Greens is one of a political party endorsed by George Soros.

“In its personnel, its operating model, its financing, and, more particularly, its agenda, GetUp faithfully perpetuates most of the worrying concerns of its progenitor, George Soros. GetUp has now been fully exposed as Soros’ local Australian franchise, operated as a joint venture by the Greens, Labor and the unions.”
- Eric Abetz

In 2016, Senator Eric Abetz claimed that GetUp!, an Australian activist organization received funding and support from Soros's Open Society Foundations (OSF). Abetz argued that this association highlights a foreign influence on Australia's political movements and activist campaigns.7

Abetz believes the Greens party, along with other entities, is influenced by Soros’ agenda through their connection to GetUp! .

NGOs masquerading as progressive forces and trying to create a political instability is one of the major problems faced by India and many other countries.