On Friday, we wrote about the Adani group’s latest headache: a group of investigative journalists’ damning report alleging the conglomerate used offshore funds to invest in its own stocks. The report drives home some of the claims first brought to light in January by American short seller Hindenburg Research.

The Adani group called these “recycled allegations” but one thing in the new report really stood out. That India’s markets regulator was informed of the group’s seemingly dubious dealings in at least two instances. In 2014, the chief of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, India’s premier financial investigative agency, wrote to the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India flagging a case it was investigating involving alleged over-invoicing of equipment, to the tune of over Rs 6,000 crore, by an Adani group company.

However, SEBI did not take the investigation forward.

A key event took place that year: Narendra Modi was elected the Prime Minister. Interestingly, Upendra Kumar Sinha, the SEBI chairman who the DRI chief wrote to regarding the Adani group, received two extensions under the Modi government. He remained SEBI chief between 2011 and 2017. Ironically, he was appointed the non-executive chairman and independent director of Adani-owned NDTV in March this year, shortly after the release of the Hindenburg report.

So, who is U.K. Sinha? Sinha started as a probationary officer in the State Bank of India. He has a postgraduate degree in physics from Patna Science College and a bachelor’s degree in law from Patna University, according to a Mint report. He then joined the Indian Administrative Services in 1976 and was an officer in the Bihar cadre. Prior to being chairman at SEBI, he led the UTI Asset Management Company Limited—as the chairman and managing director—and chaired the Association of Mutual Funds in India.

In his career spanning over three decades, Sinha has held various government positions. Before joining UTI in 2005, Sinha served three years in the finance ministry as joint secretary in the department of economic affairs, overseeing banking and capital markets divisions. In the banking division, he played a pivotal role in seeing through the merger of ICICI Ltd with ICICI Bank Ltd, which resulted in the country’s first universal bank. While overseeing capital markets, he also supervised the restructuring of UTI.

Additionally, he played a significant role in crafting the SEBI (Amendment) Act of 2002. He was appointed chairman of the working group on foreign investment in India in 2010, and has been part of several committees set up by the government, including those on liquidity management, foreign institutional investors, corporate bond market and investor protection.

Working with the government and government officials is no new feat for the bureaucrat. As a district magistrate in three Bihar districts, he has worked under four chief ministers. And in the finance ministry, he has seen four finance ministers come and go, according to the Mint report.

Sinha has been credited for driving the micro-pension movement in India, which aims to help low-earning, unorganized sector workers save for their retirement, according to a SEBI press release.

On the corporate front, besides NDTV, Sinha also serves as an independent director on the board of Nippon India Life Asset Management, Vedanta, Havells India, Housing Development Finance Corporation, and more.

This begs the question whether bureaucrats joining private companies criss-crosses with their agendas. Apart from Sinha, several retired senior bureaucrats, bankers, and regulators have held positions on companies’ boards. For instance, O.P. Bhatt, former State Bank of India chief, was an independent director at Tata Steel until June. He currently serves as an independent director at Hindustan Unilever and Tata Motors. Another former SEBI chairman, M. Damodaran, is a director on the boards of Larsen & Toubro, Hero MotoCorp, Biocon and IndiGo.

That’s probably a story for another edition. Coming back to the Adani group and SEBI.

Cause of concern: The latest report is not the first time the SEBI’s action, or in this case, inaction has come into the spotlight.

In the wake of the Hindenburg report, which accused the group of stock manipulation, accounting irregularities, fund misappropriation and more, questions arose about the market regulator’s knowledge of these allegations.

While SEBI has dismissed claims that it was investigating the Adani group since 2016, calling it “factually baseless,” revelations from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project report clearly state that it was made aware of issues with the conglomerate as early as 2014.

“There are indications that a part of the siphoned of money may have found its way to stock markets in India as investment and disinvestment in the Adani Group,” Najib Shah, the then DRI director general had written to UK Sinha, in January 2014.

According to The Guardian, Shah had sent information to Sinha as SEBI was understood to be looking into the Adani group’s activities in the stock market.

On being asked about the near-vertical rise in Adani’s share prices owing to “round tripping” of funds, one of the issues the Hindenburg & OCCRP reports flag, Sinha had told The Wire in February, “To the best of my information, the fact that there is round tripping happening and that is why the share prices are rising that has come in public domain for the first time after this Hindenburg report.”

He added that it is not the SEBI’s or the Reserve Bank of India’s task to look “at what price they are trading unless there is some information available to SEBI that there is some hanky panky happening.”

Perhaps the 2014 letter doesn’t ring a bell.

When asked recently about Shah’s 2014 letter, Sinha told Scroll, “You should not expect me in all fairness to remember everything what happened nine years ago, given that I retired from SEBI six years ago,” adding that he cannot “recollect what the facts are”.

“If something was done nine years back, and you are alleging I was given this directorship for that, I have nothing to comment,” Sinha added.

According to transparency activist Arun Aggarwal, SEBI’s failure to thoroughly investigate the Adani group allegedly goes beyond mere oversight, suggesting potential “connivance”.

Playing favourites? Aggarwal’s claim seems to have been substantiated by The Guardian, which cites insiders privy to SEBI developments, saying that the regulator’s interest in investigating the Adani group reportedly dwindled after the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in May 2014.

Gautam Adani’s ties with Narendra Modi—which dates back to 2002 when the current Prime Minister was Gujarat’s chief minister—have caused alarm across folds. Their parallel rise in power has been apparent. With Modi winning two terms in a row since 2014, the conglomerate’s stock value too skyrocketed—from about $8 billion in 2013 to a whopping $288 billion by September 2022.

“That Adani and Modi forged a close bond during their years in Gujarat is an open secret,” according to Milan Vaishnav, South Asia director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is no question that the fortunes of these two men are connected,” he has said.

Recently, the Greek City Times reported that Modi showed keen interest in the Piraeus port during his recent “historic” visit to Greece. He believed it could be India’s “gateway to the European Union”. However, the proposition was reportedly on behalf of Gautam Adani, whose ports-to-power conglomerate is eyeing Piraeus.

“Modi and Adani probably share the closest relationship a politician can have with a business person; certainly, it had never happened in India. Their rise has been together,” Ashok Swain, HoD of peace and conflict research at Sweden’s Uppsala University told CNBC.