Industrialist Gautam Adani has been indicted in New York for his alleged role in a multibillion-dollar bribery and fraud scheme related to his solar projects in India, the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District said on Wednesday.
A judge has also issued arrest warrants for the founder of the Adani Group and his nephew, Sagar Adani, Reuters reported, citing court records. The prosecutor plans to hand the warrants to “foreign law enforcement”, the news agency added.
Gautam Adani and seven others, including Sagar Adani, agreed to pay over $265 million, or nearly Rs 2,236 crore, in bribes to Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024 to obtain contracts expected to yield a profit of $2 billion, or nearly Rs 16,880 crore, over 20 years, alleged a statement by the US Attorney’s office.
“Gautam S Adani and seven other business executives allegedly bribed the Indian government to finance lucrative contracts designed to benefit their businesses,” read the statement.
It claimed: “Adani and other defendants also defrauded investors by raising capital on the basis of false statements about bribery and corruption, while still other defendants allegedly attempted to conceal the bribery conspiracy by obstructing the government’s investigation.”
The other six persons named by the prosecutor are Vneet S Jaain, the CEO of Adani Green Energy, Ranjit Gupta, who was CEO of Azure Power Global between 2019 and 2022, Rupesh Agarwal, who worked with Azure Power between 2022 and 2023, and Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, and Deepak Malhotra, all three of whom worked with a Canadian institutional investor.
According to the prosecutor, Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain raised over $3 billion, or nearly Rs 25,322 crore, in loans and bonds by allegedly hiding their corruption from lenders and investors.
“Gautam S Adani, Sagar R Adani and Vneet S Jaain allegedly conspired to misrepresent the Indian Energy Company’s anti-bribery and corruption practices and conceal the Bribery Scheme from US investors and international financial institutions in order to obtain financing, including to fund those solar energy supply contracts procured through bribery,” the statement read.
The three of them allegedly raised funds based on false and misleading statements through two syndicate loans of over $2 billion from lender groups, comprising international financial institutions and investors based in the United States, it added.
“The allegations made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against directors of Adani Green are baseless and denied,” the Adani Group said in a statement on Thursday. “As stated by the US Department of Justice itself, ‘the charges in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty’. All possible legal recourse will be sought.”
The statement added: “The Adani Group has always upheld and is steadfastly committed to maintaining the highest standards of governance, transparency and regulatory compliance across all jurisdictions of its operations. We assure our stakeholders, partners and employees that we are a law-abiding organisation, fully compliant with all laws.”
The US Attorney’s office also claimed that Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain offered two Rule 144A bond offerings worth more than $1 billion, underwritten by international financial institutions, which were marketed and sold to investors in the United States, among other locations.
Rule 144A is a US Securities and Exchange Commission regulation that allows qualified institutional buyers to trade privately placed securities without registering with the commission.
“In addition, Gautam S Adani, Sagar R Adani and Vneet S Jaain caused the Indian Energy Company to make false statements in their consolidated financial statements and to the market and investors regarding the bribery scheme,” the statement alleged.
Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain were charged with securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy.
As per the statement, Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal conspired to obstruct the investigation into the allegations. All four of them agreed to delete electronic materials related to the alleged fraud and also withheld material information from another investigation into the matter conducted by the US Issuer’s Board of Directors.
They are alleged to have falsely denied their participation in the crime to the authorities. “For this conduct, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal are charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice,” read the statement.
The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US Securities and Commodities Fraud and the United Kingdom-based International Corruption Units, the statement said.
Parallelly, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani were also charged in a US Securities and Exchange Commission civil case.
After the statement by the US Attorney’s office, Adani Green Energy announced that it will not go ahead with the plans to raise $600 million, or nearly Rs 5,000 crore, in US dollar-denominated bonds.
The bond sale was intended to raise funds for the company’s renewable energy projects.
Shares of the Adani Group also plunged as the markets opened on Thursday, the Hindustan Times reported.
The shares of Adani Green Energy dropped 16%, or by Rs 225.85 to Rs 1,185.90, after the markets opened. The flagship company of the Adani Group, Adani Enterprises Limited, saw its shares fall by 10% or by Rs 282.00 to reach Rs 2,538.20.
The Congress on Thursday said that the charges vindicated the demand that the party had been making since January 2023 for a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation into the various “Modani [Prime Minister Narendra Modi-Gautam Adani] scams”.
In a social media post, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the action taken by the US Securities and Exchange Commission “also cast poor light on the manner in which its Indian counterpart, namely SEBI [Securities and Exchange Board of India], has gone about investigating violations of securities and other laws by the Adani Group”.
He added: “The INC reiterates its demand for a JPC into the transactions of the Adani Group, which is leading to growing monopolisation in key sectors of the Indian economy, fueling inflation, and posing huge foreign policy challenges as well, especially in our neighbourhood.”
The charges come nearly two years after the American short-seller Hindenburg Research accused the Adani Group of pulling off the “largest con in corporate history” through accounting fraud, improper use of tax havens and money laundering. The Adani Group rejected these allegations, but the report pummelled the stocks of its listed companies and wiped out $111 billion of investors’ money.
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