The Adani Group has denied allegations of bribery made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against its founder and Chairman, Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and Adani Green Energy’s MD and CEO, Vineet Jain. In a statement filed with the stock exchanges, Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) referred to media reports on the alleged bribery and corruption charges as “incorrect.”
“Media articles which state that certain of our directors namely Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet aain have been charged with violation(s) of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in the indictment. Such statements are incorrect,” said the statement by Adani Green Energy Ltd.
“Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain have not been charged with any violation of the FCPA in the counts set forth in the indictment of the US DOJ or civil complaint of the US SEC,” it added.
In a legal indictment, count refers to individual charges against a defendant.
The filing states that, the DoJ Indictment, which has five counts, does not have any mention of and has excluded Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani or Vneet Jaain in Count One: ”Conspiracy to Violate the FCPA’; neither does it have mention of these three names in Count Five: “Conspiracy to obstruct justice”
The Count One of the indictment, which refers to the corruption and bribery charges, only involves Ranjit Gupta, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal of Azure Power and CDPQ (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec – a Canadian institutional investor and Azure’s largest shareholder).
The statement says that, Adani officials are only charged for Count 2:” Alleged securities fraud conspiracy”, Count 3:” Alleged wire fraud conspiracy”, and Count “Alleged securities fraud.” The DoJ Indictment, offers no evidence that bribes were paid by Adani executives to Indian government officials, the indictment and the complaint solely rest on claims that bribes were promised or discussed.
The Adani Group is one of India’s largest infrastructure players with sizeable operations in the global energy and logistics space.
Over the past few years, the Indian conglomerate has been expanding its operations in international markets and directly competes with several US and Chinese entities in Africa, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Israel, Australia, etc. Since the intimation of the US DoJ Indictment, the group has suffered a loss of near USD 55 Bn in its market capitalization across its 11 listed companies.
