Gautam Adani, India’s one of the wealthiest persons, has been inducted in the US for allegedly orchestrating a $250 million bribery scheme and hiding it to generate money in the US.
US prosecutors have accused Adani and others of launching a scheme to bribe Indian government officials to win contracts worth billions of dollars as they aimed to raise funds from US investors.
The contracts for the Adani’s renewable energy company were expected to yield over $2 billion profit over 20 years.
US Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement: “As alleged, the defendants devised an extensive scheme to bribe the Indian government officials to secure multi-billion-dollar contracts and lied about the bribery scheme while attempting to raise funds from US and international investors,”.
The officials alleged that Adani personally met with the government officials on several occasions to advance the bribery scheme.
Meanwhile, the Adani Group has rejected the allegations, calling them “baseless”.
“All possible legal recourse will be sought,” it said in a statement.
Following the indictment, shares of Adani Group firms dropped by over 10% in Thursday morning trade with the group losing more than $20bn in market capitalisation.
The Adani Group has been operating under a cloud since 2023, when US short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report accusing it of decades of “brazen” manipulation in stocks and accounting fraud.
On the other hand, India’ opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that Adani should be arrested after he was charged with bribing the Indian officials to secure the government contracts.
