'One Man, One Government, One Business Group': Congress takes swipe at govt over Adani issue

The Congress has been questioning the financial dealings of billionaire Gautam Adani's group after US research firm Hindenburg alleged 'irregularities' and charged it with stock price manipulation.

As the G20 Summit got underway in the national capital, the Congress on Saturday attacked the BJP government over the Adani Group issue, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to actually believe in "One Man, One Government, One Business Group" though the conclave's theme is "One Earth One Family One Future".

The party also said the G20 is intended to be a productive gathering of the major world economies aimed at dealing with global problems in a cooperative manner, but slums are being either covered up or demolished, rendering thousands homeless while stray animals have been cruelly rounded up and mistreated to "burnish the Prime Minister's image".

Recalling Modi’s "many exhortations" at the previous G20 summits to crack down on corruption and money-laundering, Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said in a statement, "The G20 slogan is 'One Earth One Family One Future. However the Prime Minister seems to actually believe in 'One Man, One Government, One Business Group'."

Ramesh said that Modi, in the 2014 Brisbane G20 summit, had called for global cooperation "to eliminate safe havens for economic offenders", to "track down and unconditionally extradite money launderers" and to "break down the web of complex international regulations and excessive banking secrecy that hide the corrupt and their deeds". 

In the 2018 Buenos Aires Summit, Ramesh said, Modi presented a nine-point agenda "for action against fugitive economic offences and asset recovery".

Ramesh said, "the Prime Minister'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. The government itself has admitted that it has been able to bring back only two of 72 major economic offenders in recent years."

He said the Prime Minister's "brazenness" would be laughable if his complicity in high-level corruption and economic offences were not so serious. 

"The Prime Minister has not simply 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," Ramesh said. 

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", he alleged.

"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 enfeebled agencies have been made subservient to the Adanis’ and the PM’s corporate interests," Ramesh said.

Ramesh noted that the Supreme Court's Expert Committee itself spoke about how Sebi itself deleted the requirement for overseas funds to report their actual ownership, which it belatedly tried to undo in June 2023 long after the "Adani horse had bolted".

"Would it have done so without pressure from the top? Note that it deleted those 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," he said.