US charges Indian billionaire Adani with fraud over bribery scheme

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Gautam Adani, the founder India’s Adani Group whose net worth of $137 billion makes him the richest person in Asia, had gradually started making more overseas deals - M. Scott Brauer / The New York Times/File
By Nico Grant

NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors in New York charged Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest people, with multiple counts of fraud Wednesday (20), accusing him and associates of bribing Indian officials and later lying to investors about the scheme.

Adani, who has amassed a fortune estimated to be more than $85 billion from the Adani Group, a conglomerate with holdings in ports, coal mines and airports, was charged with wire and securities fraud by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, the office said in a statement.

The defendants are accused of paying more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy contracts worth billions of dollars for Adani Green Energy, a renewable energy company majority-owned by Adani Group. Adani discussed the bribery plan with officials in person, prosecutors said.

Adani Green Energy then tried to raise money from US and international investors with a 2021 bond offering on the basis of false and misleading statements about the firm’s anti-corruption and anti-bribery efforts, according to the indictment.

“As alleged, the defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars,” Breon Peace, the US attorney for the district, said in a statement. Adani and his associates “lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from US and international investors”.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case saying Adani Green Energy raised more than $175 million from US investors. One of Adani’s associates was charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits companies that operate in the United States from bribing foreign officials.

Other executives at Adani’s energy company who were charged Wednesday included Sagar R. Adani, Gautam Adani’s nephew, and Vneet S. Jaain. The government also indicted former employees of a Canadian institutional investor, including Deepak Malhotra, who are accused of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to obstruct investigations into the bribery scheme and a grand jury.

A lawyer for Gautam Adani could not be immediately reached for comment. A lawyer for Sagar Adani declined to comment. Mike Kendall, a lawyer for Malhotra, said his client “is innocent of the charges”.

According to the indictment, the defendants kept track of their bribes and offers to Indian officials using messaging apps, phones and PowerPoint presentations, sometimes using “code names” in their communications. Several of the defendants referred to Gautam Adani as ‘SAG’, ‘Mr A’,  ‘Numero uno’ and ‘the big man’, the indictment said. Jaain was called ‘V’, ‘snake’ and ‘Numero uno minus one’.

The government goes on to claim that two of the defendants engaged in discussions to delete “incriminating electronic materials, including emails, electronic messages and a PowerPoint analysis”.

While Gautam Adani’s investments in critical infrastructure have made him a powerful force in the Indian economy, his political connections have also set him apart. At the heart of them is a personal relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has helped Adani’s company win lucrative contracts. In some instances, the government has changed bidding rules to help the company gain control of airports.

Adani and Modi are both from the state of Gujarat, and when Modi became prime minister in 2014, he flew to New Delhi on an Adani plane. Their relationship has created a widespread perception in India that Adani can forge any deal he wants, and that there is an uneven playing field.

Adani has rejected claims of special treatment, saying the foundations of his business were laid when the Indian government relaxed trade restrictions in the 1980s, long before Modi led the country.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, enacted in 1977 but more stringently enforced only in recent decades, has led to huge fines for companies, including Germany’s engineering giant Siemens; Brazil’s state-owned energy company, Petrobras; and a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services company. Bribery of foreign officials was also a key element in a vast scandal that involved a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB and entangled the investment bank, Goldman Sachs.

President-elect Donald Trump wanted to strike down the law during his first term because he considered it unfair to US companies, according to two Washington Post reporters in a book published in 2020. Another critic of the law is Jay Clayton, whom Trump has chosen to become US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Clayton argued in a 2011 paper that the United States’ anti-bribery policies tended “to place disproportionate burdens on US-regulated companies in international transactions,” hurting American competitiveness.

Adani congratulated Trump on his election in a post on social platform X last Wednesday, promising to invest $10 billion in “US energy security and resilient infrastructure projects” and create up to 15,000 jobs.

Nearly two years ago, Adani’s Adani Group was accused of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering” by Hindenburg Research, a small investment firm in New York. The Adani Group denied those claims, but its stock price cratered after the report.

-New York Times

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