India (Commonwealth) _ One of the wealthiest individuals in the world, an Indian billionaire, was charged in the United States with deceiving investors by hiding the fact that his company’s massive solar energy initiative on the subcontinent was being aided by a purported bribery scheme.
In a federal indictment that was made public on Wednesday, Gautam Adani, 62, was accused of conspiracy to engage in securities and wire fraud as well as securities fraud. A profitable deal for Adani Green Energy Ltd. and another company to sell the Indian government 12 gigawatts of solar power—enough to light millions of homes and businesses—is at issue in this case.
The indictment portrays Adani and his fellow defendants as having two sides to the transaction.
They are accused of deceiving Wall Street investors, who have invested billions of dollars in the project over the past five years, by presenting a positive image. Meanwhile, back in India, they are accused of paying or preparing to pay approximately $265 million in bribes to government officials, with the aim of securing contracts and financing worth billions of dollars.
The tycoon and his co-defendants sought to use fraud and deception to secure and finance massive state energy supply contracts at the expense of American investors, says Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller.
According to U.S. Attorney Breon Peace, the defendants “planned a complex scheme to enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of our financial markets.” Adani’s Indian company failed to immediately react to Thursday’s steep decline in shares of its Indian corporate empire.
Adani’s co-defendants include Vneet Jaain, who served as the company’s CEO from 2020 to 2023 and is currently the managing director of its board, and his nephew Sagar Adani, who is the executive director of Adani Green Energy’s board.
Online court records listed no attorney who could represent Adani. An email for a response was sent to the Adani Group, a division of his conglomerate. Additionally, emails were sent to the attorneys for his co-defendants.
Sean Hecker, Sagar Adani’s attorney, declined to comment. None of the others answered right away.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Adani and two co-defendants with breaching the antifraud provisions of U.S. securities laws in a related civil case. In addition to other sanctions, the regulator is pursuing monetary fines. The regulator filed the two lawsuits in Brooklyn federal court.
Gautam and Sagar Adani are accused of misleading investors into purchasing their company’s bonds by claiming that Adani Green had a strong anti-bribery compliance program and that the company’s senior management had not paid or promised to pay bribes, according to the acting director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, Sanjay Wadhwa.
In the most populous country in the world, Adani is a major power. In the 1990s, he made his wealth in the coal industry. From producing defense equipment to constructing highways to marketing cooking oil, the Adani Group expanded to encompass many facets of Indian life.
The Adani Group, embodying a sustainable business strategy in its tagline, “Growth with Goodness,” has made significant strides in renewable energy in recent years.
One of the biggest solar power facilities in the world is located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and it is part of the company’s 20-gigawatt clean energy portfolio. According to Adani Group, the company wants to dominate the market in the nation by 2030.
Gautam Adani stated in 2022 that by 2032, the business would have invested $70 billion in clean energy projects.
Last year, a U.S.-based financial research firm named Hindenburg Research accused Adani and his business of “blatant stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud”. The Adani Group described the claims as a nasty concoction of outdated, unfounded, and discredited allegations, along with selective misinformation.
Hindenburg has made such transactions in connection with the Adani Group and is referred to as a short-seller on Wall Street, a phrase used to describe traders who effectively wager that the values of particular equities would decline. As a result, the company’s price fell, and it fell once more in August after Hindenburg made further accusations of wrongdoing.
