Gautam Adani, nephew Sagar Adani clear of bribery charges as per US DoJ indictment

New Delhi, Nov 27: Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani, nephew Sagar Adani, and senior executive Vneet Jaain are clear of any bribery charges as per the US Department of Justice (DoJ), according to the latest filing with the stock exchanges by a group company, Adani Green Energy Ltd. (AGEL). In its filing, AGEL has cited the news reporting by various media houses on the bribery and corruption charges against Adani Officials as ‘Incorrect’.

“Media articles which state that certain of our directors namely Mr Gautam Adani, Mr Sagar Adani and Mr Vneet Jaain have been charged with violation(s) of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in the indictment. Such statements are incorrect,” said the statement filed by Adani Green Energy Ltd. “Mr Gautam Adani, Mr Sagar Adani and Mr 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 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”.

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). No Adani official has been named by DoJ under this.

However, a flawed understanding of the DoJ indictment by various media foreign as well as Indian has led to incorrect and reckless reporting of Adani Directors of being charged with corruption and bribery under or of all five counts by the US DoJ and SEC. 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. All of this is based on likelihoods and hearsay from former employees of Azure Power and CDPQ placing the US DoJ’s and US SEC’s action against Adani on dangerously shaky ground both morally and legally.

The ill-founded US action and reckless false reporting have led to significant repercussions for the Indian conglomerate, such as international project cancellations, financial market impact and a sudden examination from strategic partners, investors and the public.

Adani Group is India’s largest infrastructure player with sizable 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 nearly $55 billion in its market capitalisation across its 11 listed companies.