Billionaire Gautam Adani charged fraud, bribery in New York

Gautam Adani, the chair of India’s Adani Group conglomerate and one of the world’s richest people, has been indicted in New York federal court with other defendants in connection with an alleged multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme, authorities said Wednesday.

Adani and the other defendants are accused of agreeing to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain “lucrative solar energy supply contracts with the Indian government,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said in a press release.

Those contracts were projected to generate more than $2 billion in post-tax profits over two decades. Adani allegedly met in person with an Indian government official on several occasions as part of the bribery scheme, prosecutors said.

Adani and two other defendants, his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, who are executives of Adani Green Energy Limited, are also accused of conspiring to commit wire fraud and securities fraud for their roles in obtaining funds from investors in the United States and international lenders “on the basis of false and misleading statements,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said.

“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. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

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