The Adani Group is making international headlines again.
Until recently, journalistic investigations and a 2023 report by New York-based short seller Hindenburg had indicated that some of the conglomerate’s so-called public investors were actually people tied to the Adani family who had put hundreds of millions of dollars into the group’s stocks between 2013 and 2018, possibly violating India’s securities laws. But these trades were much more recent and far larger – totalling a little over three billion dollars – fresh documents obtained by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a network of investigative journalists, and shared with the Financial Times suggest.
Here’s what the internal documents of Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, show. In early 2023, just after Hindenburg accused the Adani Group of “brazen stock manipulation”, the bank dug into its own Adani-linked clients. It found that Taiwanese businessman Chang Chung-Ling and Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, held a little over USD 1 billion and USD 2 billion, respectively, in hedge fund units. The bank believed that this money was “likely” invested in Adani companies, according to a memo accessed by OCCRP and FT.
To understand why these allegations matter, it helps to know the men being named. This is not the first time that either Nasser or Chung-Ling have been linked to alleged wrongdoing by the Adani Group in government or media investigations.
Their names appeared in two separate investigations into the Adani Group by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), which falls under India’s Ministry of Finance. The cases, which were eventually dismissed, related to an allegedly illegal diamond trading scheme the agency investigated in 2007, and an alleged over-invoicing scam it examined in 2014.
In Switzerland, an August 2024 court ruling revealed that prosecutors suspected Chung-Ling of being a “front man” for Adani Group investments and that the country’s authorities had frozen over USD 310 million related to him in assets. (As multiple news reports have noted, although Chung-Ling is not named in the case, he is identifiable by the details provided. No charges have been brought so far.)
A Financial Times report identified Chung-Ling as a middleman for the Adani Group in coal shipments whose value, the publication alleged, rose sharply while the cargo was still at sea. Earlier OCCRP and FT reports also alleged that Chung-Ling and Nasser were among the most significant secret investors of Adani Group shares, who were trading their stock in coordination with the Adani family while hiding their involvement through complicated offshore structures.
Simply put, although Chung-Ling and Nasser appeared to be independent investors trading in Adani stock, the reports alleged that they were actually insiders who were masking their identities. In fact, the administrators and investment managers of the hedge funds mentioned in the Intesa bank memo featured in FT and OCCRP’s earlier reporting on Adani-linked offshore structures too.
So what if Chung-Ling and Nasser are insiders, you might ask. Buying and selling of stocks is, of course, not illegal on its own. But under rules set by the market regulator Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), a company’s directors and “promoters”—meaning a business’ majority owners and their affiliated parties—can hold up to 75% of its shares. The remaining 25%, called free float, must be held by the public.
If Nasser and Chung-Ling were to be considered to be acting on behalf of the Adani promoters, it would mean that insiders owned more than 75% of the group’s publicly traded stock. This, experts allege, can open the door to share price manipulation, since companies can then create an artificial scarcity of their shares to increase their value.
(In September 2025, SEBI dismissed two allegations made against the Adani Group by Hindenburg, relating to stock price manipulation and non-disclosure of related party entities. However, the regulator was still looking into more than two dozen allegations against the conglomerate, according to a Reuters report that cited sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.)
Once the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo’s authorities flagged the Adani-linked accounts, senior bank officials met with Chung-Ling and Nasser, according to the OCCRP and FT reports. Both men confirmed that the accounts were indeed theirs. Their investment in the Adani Group shares was, they told these officials, “based on their trust in the business acumen of the members of that family.” They denied any wrongdoing and promised to diversify their holdings “in the short term,” the reports add.
Afterwards, the bank tightened its oversight. Intesa placed additional safeguards on Chung-Ling and Nasser’s accounts, including restrictions that prevented the men from making any transactions that did not have the authorisation of a specific anti-money laundering officer, OCCRP notes.
Notably, this wasn’t the first time that the bank had looked into accounts relating to Nasser and Chung-Ling, according to its memo. It had received “specific information requests” from Swiss “judicial authorities” half a year before the Hindenburg report was published in January 2023, the OCCRP report states. The banks submitted suspicious transaction reports to Swiss authorities relating to both men, as well as Vinod Adani, the elder brother of Adani Group founder-chairman Gautam Adani. These accounts — different from the ones Intesa later found to hold USD three billion — were closed in late 2022 because of being inactive.
Intesa told OCCRP and FT that the bank “is not in a position to comment, as any disclosure is not permitted by law in Italy, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland.”
When OCCRP requested the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office for comment on its case relating to the Adani Group, it did not comment on Chung-Ling’s identity but confirmed that a criminal investigation into money laundering and document forgery is underway.
Chung-Ling, Nasser, Vinod Adani, as well as the investment managers and administrators, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Adani Group reportedly accused OCCRP and FT of colluding to rehash allegations it had already adequately addressed. It noted in its response that under Indian law, listed companies do not bear responsibility for public shareholders’ source of funds beyond disclosures mandated by the regulators. “The Adani portfolio of companies remains fully compliant with all laws and disclosure requirements across jurisdictions and continues to have complete faith in due process and the rule of law,” the response added.
About a week before these stories were published, a trial court in Gujarat convicted the financial investigative journalist Ravi Nair of criminal defamation in an earlier case filed by the Adani Group. Ravi has authored several reports on the conglomerate, including the recent OCCRP investigation. The conviction arose from his previous investigations into the group for the digital publication Adani Watch, as well as a series of tweets he posted between October 2020 and July 2021. He was sentenced to a year of imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000.
The international non-profit organisation Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) recently noted that since 2017, the Adani Group has waged an “unprecedented legal war against journalists and media outlets”, using civil and criminal defamation lawsuits to “obstruct the work of at least 15 journalists, including some of the most respected voices in Indian media.”