Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Tuesday hit out at billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani for attacking UK-based newspaper Financial Times over a proposed story on the conglomerate.

“First they said Adani is India & any anti Adani allegations are anti India,” Mahua Moitra said in a social media post, referring to Adani Group’s statements in the aftermath of damaging reports by US short-seller Hindenburg Research. “Now they say @FT is Soros! We are all Soros agents – but for Adani even a real brother is not a related party!”

Adani Group in a media statement Monday claimed that the proposed story was being “fronted by” an FT journalist who “jointly with the OCCRP put out a false narrative” against the Adani Group in August, linking it to controversial investor and philanthropist George Soros.

The conglomerate alleged that these articles were part of an extended campaign to advance vested interests under the guise of public interest.

“Continuing their relentless campaign, the next attack is being fronted by Dan McCrum of the Financial Times, who jointly with the OCCRP put out a false narrative against the Adani Group on 31 August 2023. The OCCRP is funded by George Soros, who has openly declared his hostility against the Adani Group,” the Adani Group statement said.

“The FT’s proposed story is based on the DRI’s General Alert Circular No.11/2016/CI dated 30 March 2016. The FT’s brazen agenda is exposed by the fact that they have singled out the Adani Group, while the DRI’s Circular, the raison d’etre for the whole story, mentions as many as 40 importers including the Adani Group companies,” it added.

“This list not only includes some of India’s major private power generators like Reliance Infra, JSW Steels and Essar but also the state power generating companies of Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, etc. and the NTPC and MSTC.”

The conglomerate noted that the issue of overvaluation in the import of coal was conclusively settled by India’s highest court of law.

“The FT’s proposed storyline is a clever recycling and selective misrepresentation of publicly available facts and information with a deliberate and mischievous suppression of judicial decisions to arrive at a predetermined conclusion. It shows scant respect for India’s regulatory and judicial processes and authorities. It also deliberately ignores the fact that coal procurement in India on a long-term supply basis is done through an open, transparent, global bidding process thereby eliminating any possibility of price manipulation,” it added.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in an August report alleged two individual investors with “longtime business ties” to the Adani family used such offshore structures to buy and sell Adani shares between 2013 and 2018. It said that the two investors were associated with companies of the group as well as with Vinod Adani, who is a brother of Gautam Adani.