Gautam Adani, chairman and founder of the Adani Group, speaks during the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2019 at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar, India, on Jan. 18, 2019, and is charged with conspiring to defraud U.S. and international investors to raise capital for a solar energy scheme in India. File Photo by Divyakant Solanki/EPA-EFE
Nov. 20 (UPI) — Gautam Adani, a billionaire from India, and seven others are accused of hiding bribes to Indian officials from U.S. investors in a solar energy scheme worth billions of dollars.
The U.S. District Court for Eastern New York on Wednesday unsealed an indictment in which Adani and seven other defendants are accused of lying to U.S. and international investors and lenders to raise capital for a solar energy scheme involving one of the world’s largest solar energy projects that is planned in India.
Gautam Adani founded and chairs the India-based Adani Group and is ranked by Bloomberg as Asia’s second-richest and the world’s 18th-richest billionaire with a fortune of $85.5 billion.
Adani and his co-defendants from about 2020 to 2024 agreed to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials to secure solar-energy supply contracts that would generate more than $2 billion in profits over 20 years, the DOJ said.
The indictment charges Indian renewable-energy firm executives Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain with five counts each for alleged conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud in a multi-billion scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions by making false and misleading statements.
“The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.
“Gautam Adaini, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” Peace added.
The indictment also accuses former renewable-energy company executives Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal with crimes related to securities traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Also indicted are former Canadian institution investor employees Cyril Cabenes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra for alleged conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act related to the alleged bribery scheme for which Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain are charged.
The bribes allegedly enabled the defendants to “lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars and obstruct justice,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller said in a prepared statement Wednesday.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Dennehy said the eight defendants allegedly bribed officials in the Indian government to “finance lucrative contracts designed to benefit their businesses” while defrauding investors by “raising capital on the basis of false statements about bribery and corruption.”
Other defendants allegedly tried to conceal the bribery conspiracy by obstructing the U.S. government’s investigation into the matter.
Federal investigators said the eight defendant frequently discussed their efforts and extensively documented their schemes on an electronic messaging application, on cell phones and on PowerPoint and Excel documents that summarized bribe payments and efforts to conceal them.
The defendants allegedly caused the Indian Energy Company and some of its subsidiaries to raise capital based on false and misleading statements connected to two loans totaling more than $2 billion from U.S. and international lenders.
The defendants also allegedly caused the Indian Energy Company to make false statements in financial statements, to the market and to investors regarding the alleged bribery scheme.
The DOJ says all defendants are innocent until proven guilty.