The Adani group seems to be making a fresh attempt to restart its sputtering growth engine. A joint venture of the conglomerate is said to be in talks with nearly half a dozen banks for a $220 million loan, which would be its first since short seller Hindenburg Research ignited a firestorm with its report in January.

Data centre provider AdaniConneX, a joint venture with Virginia-based EdgeConneX, would use the funds for capex, with a five-year tenor under discussion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The loan is likely to be signed in the next few weeks, says the report.

The group was compelled to rethink its expansion plans after the Hindenburg report accused it of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, wiping out $100 billion in market value after its stocks took a beating. Also, its flagship, Adani Enterprises, was forced to shelve a Rs 20,000 crore follow-on public offer.

Ever since the scathing report, skeletons have continued to tumble out of the closet at the group.

The coal connection

A deep dive by Scroll has found that the behemoth recently bagged a coal block for which the only other bidder was a firm that had close links with a company whose name had surfaced in the Hindenburg report.

In March, the Adani group won the bids for four coal blocks at prices that were among the lowest. One of the blocks—North West of Madheri (Maharashtra)—had only one other bidder, Cavill Mining Pvt. Ltd. And who owns the firm? The main promoter of Adicorp Enterprises, a privately held company that was accused by Hindenburg of transferring funds between a bunch of Adani companies to skirt around mandatory market disclosures.

Responding to the short seller’s claims, the group had said that “Adicorp is not a related party”. But the Scroll investigation suggests otherwise. Both Adicorp and Cavill Mining share the same address in Ahmedabad. The connection runs even deeper. The company’s owner, Utkarsh Shah, found mention in a recently published biography of Gautam Adani, as “a friend who is unable to compete with him in solving sudoku puzzles”, according to Scroll. A curious connection indeed.