Gautam Adani indicted in New York on bribery charges

Ramishah Maruf, CNN

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and other executives were indicted in New York for roles in a multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme, the US Department of Justice said Wednesday. Authorities said Adani and seven other senior business executives, including his nephew Sagar Adani, promised more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy contracts.

Those bribes were “to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller in a statement Wednesday.

Worth more than $85 billion, Adani is Asia’s second-richest person behind countryman Mukesh Ambani, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He is the founder of sprawling Indian conglomerate Adani Group. The solar energy supply contracts were projected to raise more than $2 billion in profits after tax over an approximately 20-year period.

Authorities said Adani personally met with an Indian government official to advance the scheme, which took place between 2020 to 2024. The defendants frequently met and discussed the bribery scheme, including evidence on several phones.

Some of that documentation included a cell phone to extensively track specific details on the bribes, a photograph of a document summarizing various bribe amounts and PowerPoint and Excel analyses “that summarized various options for paying and concealing bribe payments,” the Department said in its statement. Adani and his associates tried to hide these bribery schemes from US investors “in order to obtain financing, including to fund those solar energy supply contracts procured through bribery,” the DOJ said.

In a parallel action, the Securities and Exchange Commission also charged both Adanis (as executives of Adani Green Energy Ltd) and Cyril Cabanes, an executive of Azure Power Global, for the bribery scheme that the SEC said allowed both companies to capitalize off a lucrative contract by the Indian government. The SEC said Adani Green raised more than $175 million from US investors on those misrepresentations…

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/gautam-adani-indicted/index.html

***************************************************

Debunking a Myth: Only 17 Political Parties Of 105 In EC List Got Electoral Bonds

The Great Escape: When India’s Political Landscape Shifted

Rahul Pandita: What I learned from G. N. Saibaba

The sinking of Joshimath and the commercialisation of sacredness

Lowering the Bar

Professor’s Harassment by ABVP Shows Near-Complete Takeover of Universities by RSS-BJP

How the RSS, Golwalkar & Hindu Mahasabha glorified caste: Devanur Mahadevan

Pratap Bhanu Mehta: The limits of the Hindu vs Hindutvavadi debate

Anand K. Sahay: The idea behind capturing power in any kind of way: fair or foul

Javed Anand: On RSS reassurances to Muslims, deeds matter more than words