"In a seemingly desperate move the billionaire chairman of Adani has announced that early in November he met the new Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and demanded legislation be passed to extinguish legal actions challenging the proposed Carmichael coal mine.
On Saturday, a little over a month after his meeting with Turnbull, Gautam Adani complained to journalists that legal challenges against the $15 billion mine, railway and port project had caused banks to refuse to finance the project.
“Ultimately, a decision lies with the politicians. They have to go to Parliament for enacting a special law which says that once government gives approval, no one can challenge it. That is what our request is to the Australian government. You come up with a special legislation which they have done in the past also,” Adani complained.
“Even though there is no stay, because of the judicial review, no lender will finance the project. They do not know what will be the outcome,” Adani told journalists, including the Indian business news website LiveMint.
Adani also bemoaned the dramatic slump in thermal coal process in the seaborne coal market. “In the meanwhile, coal prices have also slumped. We have to revive to the next cycle,” he said."
