Gautam Adani charged with fraud and bribery in US
Gautam Adani has been accused of paying a bribe of $250 million to get a contract for one of his companies in the US and covering up the matter.
The criminal case filed in New York on Wednesday is a big blow to 62-year-old Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest men.
Adani’s business empire extends from ports and airports to the energy sector.
US prosecutors alleged that Adani and other senior officials of his company had agreed to pay Indian officials to get a contract for his renewable energy company.
The company was expected to earn profits of more than two billion dollars over the next 20 years from this contract.
The Adani Group has not yet responded to a request for comment on this matter.
The Adani Group has been under suspicion in the US since 2023. That year a company named Hindenburg accused Adani of fraud.
Gautam Adani had outright rejected the company’s claim, but after that news came out, the shares of Adani Group companies fell sharply.
There were reports about this bribery investigation for several months. Prosecutors have said that the investigation into this matter was started in the year 2022 itself.
It is alleged that their managers raised three billion dollars in the form of loans and bonds. Some of this money was also raised from American firms. It is alleged that this money was raised against anti-bribery policies and through misleading statements.
“As alleged, the defendants devised a secret scheme to bribe Indian government officials to obtain billions of dollars worth of contracts and lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from American and global investors,” Eastern District of New York Attorney Brion Peace said in the charges.
Brion Peace said, “My office is committed to rooting out corruption from the international market. Apart from this, investors have to be protected from those who want to make themselves rich at the cost of the credibility of our financial markets.”
Officials say that Adani himself met government officials on several occasions to further the bribery scheme.
Apart from Gautam Adani, seven other people are among those accused by the US Attorney’s Office in this case. These seven people include Sagar R Adani, Vineet S Jain, Ranjit Gupta, Rupesh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, Saurabh Agarwal and Cyril Cabanis.
Adani is considered a close associate of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Opposition parties in India have long been alleging that Adani has been benefiting due to political connections. However, Adani has been rejecting these allegations.
In America, the President appoints the attorney. This matter has come up when Donald Trump won the election just a few weeks ago.
Trump has talked about radical changes in the US Justice Department. Last week, Adani congratulated Trump on his victory on social media and announced an investment of $ 10 billion in America.
