NEW YORK (Diya TV) — One of India’s richest men and chair of the Adani Group, Gautam Adani, has been indicted in a New York federal court on charges of fraud and bribery. Adani, along with several others, is accused of operating a multi-billion-dollar scheme to win rich solar energy contracts by allegedly paying more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials.
According to the indictment unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Adani, along with his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, both executives at Adani Green Energy Limited, allegedly misled investors about how compliant the company was with anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws. The charges include securities fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations.
Prosecutors say Adani and his associates raked in over $2 billion in profits from contracts linked to the Indian government’s solar energy programme. They allegedly raised more than $3 billion from U.S. and international investors to finance these deals, while pretending to adhere to ‘ethical business practices.’.
Besides the five former officials, two of the accused are former executives of the power generation company Azure Power Global: Ranjit Gupta and Rupash Agarwal; three employees from the Canadian pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, namely, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, and Deepak Malhotra. The indictment alleges these defendants conspired to obstruct U.S. federal investigations into the bribery scheme and assisted in the cover-up.
The SEC has also filed civil complaints against Gautam and Sagar Adani, along with Cabanes, for their role in securing capital via the fraudulent means mentioned above. The SEC argued that Adani Green Energy has collected more than $175 million from U.S. investors during the scam, while Azure Power Global’s stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Gautam and Sagar Adani orchestrated a bribery scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes paid or promised to pay Indian officials for contracts at above-market rates, the SEC said in a statement.
This indictment comes after a turbulent year for Gautam Adani. The personal fortune of India’s richest person took a hit early in 2023 when short-selling firm Hindenburg Research published a report calling the Adani Group “the largest con in corporate history” in its accusations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud against the company. Once Asia’s second-richest person, Gautam Adani saw his net worth tumble following that report, although he has denied the accusations outright.
Response has come in the form of a 413-page counter-attack by Adani that labeled the allegations as baseless.