By Luke Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – In June 2020, a renewable energy company owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani won what it called the single largest solar development bid ever: 8 gigawatts of electricity to a state-owned power company. Agreement to provide.
But there was a problem. According to US officials, local power companies did not want to pay the prices the state company was offering, putting the deal in jeopardy. To save the deal, Adani reportedly decided to bribe local officials to persuade them to buy the power.
The allegation is at the center of US criminal and civil charges unsealed on Wednesday against Adani, who is not currently in US custody and is believed to be in India. His company, the Adani Group, said the allegations were “baseless” and that it would “explore all possible legal avenues.”
Local Indian officials were allegedly promised multimillion-dollar bribes that drew the attention of the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission as Adani’s companies raised funds from US-based investors in a series of transactions starting in 2021. was doing
The account of how the alleged scheme unfolded is drawn from federal prosecutors’ 54-page criminal indictment against Adani and seven of his associates and two parallel civil SEC complaints, which include major disputes between alleged participants in the scheme. The scale refers to electronic messages.
In early 2020, the Solar Energy Corporation of India gave the award. Adani Green Energy (NS:) and another company, Azure Power Global (OTC:), 12 gigawatts of solar power project contracts, according to the indictment, with both companies expected to receive billions of dollars in revenue.
It was a big step for Adani Green Energy, which is run by Adani’s nephew Sagar Adani. By that time, the company had earned about $50 million in its history and had yet to turn a profit, according to the SEC complaint.
But the initiative soon ran into obstacles. According to an April 7, 2021 report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think tank, local state electricity distributors were reluctant to commit to buying new solar power, and expected future price cuts.
According to the SEC, Sagar Adani and the Azure CEO discussed the delay at the time and hinted at a bribe on the encrypted messaging application WhatsApp.
When Azure’s CEO wrote on November 24, 2020 that local power companies were “being mobilized”, Sagar Adani reportedly replied, “Yes… but the optics are very difficult to cover. February 2021 I, Sagar Adani, reportedly wrote to the CEO, “Just so you know, we’ve doubled the incentives to drive these acceptances.”
The SEC did not name Azure’s CEO as a defendant, but Azure’s securities filings show that the CEO at the time was Ranjit Gupta.
Gupta was charged by the Justice Department with conspiracy to violate anti-bribery laws. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Azure said Thursday that it was cooperating with the U.S. investigation, and that those involved in the allegations had left the company more than a year ago.
‘Sudden Good Fortune’
According to Justice, in August 2021, Gautam Adani had the first of several meetings with an official in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, to whom he allegedly promised an eventual $228 million bribe to the state. Agree to buy electricity, according to Justice. Department’s indictment.
By December, Andhra Pradesh had agreed to buy the power, and other states soon followed with smaller deals. Officials from other states were also promised bribes, US officials said.
According to the SEC, during a meeting at a coffee shop on December 6, 2021, Azure executives allegedly “discussed rumors that the Adanis somehow facilitated the signing of the deals”.
Gautam Adani said on 14 December 2021 that the company is “on track to become the world’s largest renewables company by 2030.”
“The sudden good fortune for Azure and Adani Green has led to market speculation about contract awards,” the SEC wrote in its complaint.
Letter from the SEC
Before long, the SEC began an investigation. The agency sent a “general inquiry” letter to Azure – which was then traded on the New York Stock Exchange – on March 17, 2022, asking about its recent contracts and whether foreign authorities had any, according to the Justice Department. A valuable thing was asked for. The indictment
According to the Justice Department, Gautam Adani told Azure representatives during a meeting in his Ahmedabad, India office next month that he expected to repay more than $80 million in bribes he paid to officials. which ultimately benefited Azure’s contracts.
Some Azure representatives and a leading investor in the company decided to pay Adani back by allowing his company to take over the potentially lucrative project. Representatives and investors allegedly agreed to tell Azure’s board of directors that Adani had solicited bribe money, but concealed their role in the scheme, prosecutors said.
At the time, Adani’s companies were raising billions of dollars in loans and bonds through international banks, including American investors. In four separate fundraising transactions between 2021 and 2024, the companies sent investors documents indicating they had not paid bribes — statements prosecutors claim are false and constitute fraud.
FBI search
On 17 March 2023, during a visit to the US, FBI agents seized Sagar Adani’s electronic equipment. Agents served him with a search warrant issued by a judge indicating that the U.S. government was investigating possible violations of anti-fraud laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
According to prosecutors, Gautam Adani emailed himself images of every page of the search warrant on March 18, 2023.
Yet his companies went through a $1.36 billion syndicated loan deal on Dec. 5, 2023, and another sale of secured notes in March 2024, again exposing investors to their anti-bribery practices, according to prosecutors. provided misleading information about
On October 24, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn obtained a secret grand jury indictment against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, Gupta, and five others allegedly involved in the scheme.
The indictment was unsealed on November 20, indicating a $27 billion drop in the market value of Adani Group companies. Adani Green Energy immediately canceled a scheduled $600 million bond sale.
