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BROOKLYN (CN) — Indian billionaire Gautam Adani faces federal charges over a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme to secure solar energy contracts, the U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday.
The chair of Indian conglomerate Adani Group is accused of agreeing to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials in exchange for contracts expected to yield $2 billion in profits over 20 years.
Adani has a net worth of $85.5 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in Asia, behind Mukesh Ambani, and the 18th richest person in the world.
He is charged alongside two other executives at Adani Green Energy: Sagar R. Adani, who is his nephew, and CEO Vneet S. Jaain, with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.
Five others were also charged in connection to the scheme: two executives of another renewable energy company and three former employees of a Canadian institutional investor, one being Cyril Cabanes.
Prosecutors say that from 2020 to 2024, Adani met with Indian government officials to discuss the bribes and frequently met with his co-conspirators to iron out payment details.
The defendants also regularly documented portions of the scheme, including using cell phones to track specific details of the bribes, taking a photograph of a document that summarized various bribe amounts, and PowerPoint and Excel analyses that summarized various options “for paying and concealing bribe payments.”
Prosecutors also claim the defendants tried to hide the scheme from U.S. government officials by attempting to destroy documents that detailed the bribe payments and deleting messages discussing the plan — then, when meeting with the FBI and Justice Department, denied their involvement in the scheme.
“The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said in a statement.
Government officials also say the individuals tried to raise capital from U.S. and international investors by falsely touting the company’s commitment to anti-bribery practices. The Adani Group claimed in multiple annual reports that it had a “zero tolerance” policy for bribery and corruption during the years prosecutors say the scheme was underway.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed parallel civil suits against the Adani executives and Cabanes in relation to the bribery scheme. According to the SEC, Adani Green Energy raised more than $175 million from U.S. investors based on its misrepresentations.
The indictment reignites fraud speculation against the energy conglomerate, which was accused by Hindenburg Research in January 2023 of a “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme.” Following the report, Adani’s fortune plummeted over $80 billion despite once being worth more than Jeff Bezos.
Following the Hindenburg investigation, The Adani Group published a 400-page rebuttal saying the report was “nothing but a lie.”
According to court documents, a judge has issued arrest warrants for Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani. Nearly all defendants are Indian citizens and live in India, with the exception of Cabanes who is a dual French-Australian citizen who lives in Singapore.
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