November 21st 2024.
On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice announced that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and seven other executives were charged with involvement in a multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme. The indictment alleges that Adani and his nephew, Sagar Adani, along with other senior business leaders, promised over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials in order to secure lucrative solar energy contracts.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller stated that these bribes were used to deceive investors and banks, raising billions of dollars and obstructing justice. Adani, who is worth over $85 billion and is Asia's second-richest person according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, is the founder of the Adani Group, a large conglomerate in India.
The solar energy contracts in question were expected to generate over $2 billion in profits over a period of 20 years. The indictment alleges that Adani personally met with an Indian government official to advance the scheme, which took place between 2020 and 2024. The defendants frequently communicated and discussed the bribery scheme, with evidence found on several phones. This included a cell phone that was used to meticulously track details of the bribes, a photo of a document summarizing the bribe amounts, and PowerPoint and Excel analyses outlining options for paying and concealing these payments.
According to the Department of Justice, Adani and his associates attempted to conceal the bribery scheme from US investors in order to obtain financing for the solar energy contracts procured through bribery. In a separate action, the Securities and Exchange Commission also charged Adani, his brother, and an executive of Azure Power Global for their involvement in the scheme. The SEC alleges that Adani Green raised more than $175 million from US investors based on misrepresentations.
This is not the first time Adani has faced scrutiny. In January 2023, US short-seller Hindenburg Research accused Adani of a "brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme". This caused Adani's fortune, which was at one point worth more than Jeff Bezos, to plummet by over $80 billion. Currently, his net worth is listed at $85.5 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Hindenburg Research stated that their investigation, which took two years to compile, questioned the high valuations of Adani companies and raised concerns about their substantial debt. The Adani Group published a 400-page rebuttal, dismissing the Hindenburg analysis as "nothing but a lie". Adani, who is known to be a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, began his career in diamond trading before setting up a successful commodities trading business in 1988. Today, the Adani Group has a presence in key sectors such as ports, power, media, and clean energy.
CNN has reached out to Adani Enterprises for comment on the indictment.
[This article has been trending online recently and has been generated with AI. Your feed is customized.]
[Generative AI is experimental.]
