Company filings reviewed by The Wall Road Journal present that Opal was integrated within the island nation of Mauritius by Trustlink Worldwide Ltd., a financial-services firm with ties to the Adani household. 

One among Trustlink’s administrators, Louis Ricardo Caillou, sits on the board of Opal, based on the Mauritius filings. The filings additionally record Mr. Caillou as a board member of one other Mauritius-based firm, Krunal Commerce & Funding Pvt. Ltd., the place Mr. Adani’s older brother, Vinod Adani, and Subir Mittra, the CEO of the Adani household workplace, are additionally listed as board members. 

Trustlink Worldwide, additionally primarily based in Mauritius, acts as secretary for each firms, based on the filings. 

The query of whether or not Adani executives or members of the family wield affect over the funding choices of firms like Opal lies on the coronary heart of allegations by U.S. quick vendor Hindenburg Analysis. Hindenburg launched a 104-page report final week that accused Adani Group of wide-ranging fraud, together with the usage of shell firms to inflate inventory costs and flout India’s shareholding guidelines. 

Adani Group mentioned in a 413-page rebuttal of the Hindenburg report that it has no management over what shares Opal and different unbiased shareholders purchase or the supply of their funds. The corporate mentioned it isn’t required to know that info. The rebuttal additionally dismissed the Hindenburg report as “nothing however a lie” and “a calculated assault on India, the independence, integrity and high quality of Indian establishments.”

Vinod Adani didn’t reply to telephone calls and e-mail requests for remark. The household conglomerate, Adani Group, responded to questions on Vinod Adani by referring a reporter to their prolonged rebuttal, which says Vinod Adani doesn’t maintain any managerial place or any function within the day-to-day affairs of any Adani publicly traded firm or their subsidiaries. 

Messrs. Caillou and Mittra didn’t reply to requests for remark. 

Trustlink Worldwide CEO Giandeo Rajiv Reemul didn’t reply to a request for remark. In 2007, a submitting with India’s Bombay Inventory Change by Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of the Adani conglomerate, listed Mr. Reemul because the director of Mauritius-based Adani World Ltd.

Neither Opal or Trustlink have web sites. The web site of Krunal describes the agency as providing “companies akin to sale and supply of an intangible product, between a producer and shopper.”

Lengthy earlier than Hindenburg launched its report, a surge in share costs throughout the seven publicly traded firms that type the Adani Group propelled Mr. Adani’s fortunes. His mixed wealth peaked at $147 billion late final yr, based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Simply earlier than Hindenburg launched the report, his web price was at $119 billion, based on the index. That has since shrunk to $59 billion on Saturday, based on the index. The mixed market worth of shares of the seven public firms has additionally halved to about $110 billion,

FactSet

knowledge present.

Vinod Adani has lengthy held a central function in elevating funds for Adani Group, mentioned R. N. Bhaskar, who wrote a biography of

Gautam Adani

printed final yr. Rising up, Gautam Adani thought-about Vinod Adani a father determine, Mr. Bhaskar mentioned. When Gautam Adani moved to Mumbai as a teen Vinod Adani took him beneath his wing, mentioned Mr. Bhaskar, who has met the brothers a number of occasions. 

Vinod Adani “is an individual extraordinarily properly related with monetary establishments and cash sources around the globe,” mentioned Mr. Bhaskar. 

Offshore funding firms primarily based in Mauritius, positioned within the Indian Ocean, have restricted necessities for company disclosures. They’ve performed a key function in Adani companies’ efforts to faucet capital markets.

Mauritius-based entities agreed to purchase practically a fifth of the shares put aside for anchor traders in a big inventory sale of as much as $2.4 billion by Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship firm, based on a listing of anchor traders launched by Adani Enterprises. Seven Mauritius firms had signed on to purchase between 1.25% and 5.67% of these shares. The group collectively would have held 19.43% of the providing, based on The Journal’s calculations primarily based on the providing’s paperwork.

Adani Enterprises pulled the sale Wednesday citing unprecedented market volatility and promised to refund traders.

Firms and not using a free float of at the least 25% of shares danger being delisted beneath guidelines set by the Securities and Change Board of India. Within the third quarter of the present monetary yr, which ends March 31, Adani members of the family and firms which have publicly disclosed ties to the Adani empire held 74.97% of Adani Energy’s shares, based on company filings. Opal’s stake in Adani Energy accounts for practically 19% of the shares that Adani Energy is required to drift to unbiased shareholders.

Hindenburg founder Nate Anderson mentioned the analysis agency scraped your entire company registry of Mauritius to construct its personal searchable database, permitting Hindenburg to question the names of listed administrators or homeowners of the entities. Hindenburg mentioned it started evaluating particulars of the businesses and discovering correlations and similarities.

The Journal independently searched the government-run company registry of Mauritius and different databases to find filings on firms invested in Adani Group companies.

The Journal discovered filings that present Trustlink integrated each Opal and Krunal on the identical day, Oct. 4, 2005, utilizing the identical registered workplace deal with for each firms. The 2 entities have consecutive firm numbers within the registry: Krunal is C58854 and Opal is C58855. That signifies the paperwork was processed one after the opposite, mentioned Hariom Manchiraju, an affiliate professor of accounting at Indian College of Enterprise in Hyderabad.

Mr. Manchiraju mentioned Indian regulation requires publicly traded firms to label offshore traders as associated to the Adani household or Adani firms solely whether it is clear that the homeowners of the offshore car are shareholders or key managers of the publicly traded firms.

Krunal additionally seems beneath the title Krunal Oil Advertising within the Mauritius filings, which record each names beneath the identical firm quantity. Krunal Oil Advertising made a mortgage of $253.8 million to Adani Builders Non-public Ltd. in the course of the fiscal years 2009 and 2010, based on company filings in India.

Adani Builders, which has since modified its title to Sunbourne Builders Non-public Ltd., mentioned in filings in India that its registered workplace is the Adani Home in Ahmedabad, an Adani workplace that used to function the company headquarters. Analysts say the corporate ought to have disclosed the loans as a related-party transaction if any homeowners of Krunal maintain vital shares in Adani firms or are key administration. 

A Mauritius-based firm linked to the Adani household additionally subscribed to the not too long ago canceled inventory sale of Adani Enterprises.  

The Nice Worldwide Tusker Fund, which subscribed to 2.47% of the shares supplied to anchor traders counts Shakill Toorabally as a director. Mr. Toorabally is listed as a director, together with Vinod Adani and Subir Mittra, of the Mauritius-based Acropolis Commerce and Funding Ltd., a submitting with the Bombay Inventory Change and Mauritius’ company registry present. The stock-exchange doc exhibits that Mr. Toorabally and Mr. Mittra are additionally administrators of Xcent Commerce and Funding Ltd. 

Each Acropolis and Xcent are holding firms of

Endeavour

Commerce and Funding Ltd, which acquired 48,956,419 shares of ACC. The stock-exchange doc states that Endeavour belongs to the Adani Group.

Mr. Toorabally didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Write to Weilun Quickly at weilun.quickly@wsj.com, Ben Foldy at ben.foldy@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com