Why has Indian billionaire Gautam Adani been charged in a US bribery case?

United States prosecutors indicted billionaire Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest people, on Wednesday over his alleged lead role in a bribery scheme linked to a mega-sized solar power plant.

In a statement, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Adani – a close ally of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi – and seven of his associates, including his nephew Sagar Adani, promised Indian officials more than $250m in bribes to secure energy contracts being funded by international investors, including some from the US.

On Thursday, the Adani Group denied the allegations and called the indictment a “baseless move”. The group said it has “steadfastly maintained the highest possible standards of governance and transparency” and would seek “all possible legal recourse”.

Adani Group companies lost about $28bn in market value on Thursday morning following the indictment as shares in the group’s listed firms fell by between 10 and 20 percent on Indian stock exchanges. Adani Green Energy also cancelled a $600m bond sale.

Wednesday’s indictment comes more than a year after a US short seller and forensic auditing firm, Hindenburg Research, accused the Adani Group of stock manipulation and accounting fraud. Hindenburg has a track record of investigating companies. As a short seller, it profits when the shares of a company it sells a stake in fall.

The US indictment did not clarify if the charges were based on the Hindenburg allegations.

Opposition parties in India called for Adani’s arrest on Thursday. Raul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress Party, told reporters on Thursday that PM Modi was “protecting” his ally, Adani.

Here’s what we know about Adani and the bribery scheme:

India’s opposition Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, centre, addresses the media on Indian businessman Gautam Adani in New Delhi, India, Thursday, November 21, 2024. The image behind Gandhi shows Adani, on the left, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the right [Manish Swarup/AP]

What are the charges?

Wednesday’s charges relate to violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a US anti-bribery law.

Specifically, US prosecutors allege that Adani, 62, and two other executives at Adani Green Energy, including his nephew Sagar Adani, 30, and a third associate, Vneet S Jaain, promised Indian officials more than $250m in bribes to finance and secure contracts related to a solar power plant project with the Indian government.

Prosecutors said the contracts were expected to produce more than $2bn in profits after tax over about 20 years. Adani Green Energy also raised more than $3bn in loans and bonds from international investors based on false and misleading statements, the prosecutors allege.

Adani personally held meetings with Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024 to discuss the bribes, the prosecutors claim. Sagar Adani and Jaain also allegedly documented details of the bribes on their phones and photographed documents showing bribe amounts.

Five other Adani associates – Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, Rupesh Agarwal and Ranjit Gupta – have also been charge with related criminal conspiracy. Some of the accused conspired to obstruct justice, prosecutors say.

The associates allegedly concealed evidence by agreeing to delete emails and other electronic material. They also falsely denied their involvement in the scheme during meetings with US officials in New York, according to the DOJ. The DOJ did not disclose when these meetings were held.

All of the defendants are Indian citizens and are believed to live in India, except Cyril Cabanes, a dual French-Australian citizen who prosecutors said lives in Singapore.

Who is Gautam Adani?

The billionaire is the founder and chairman of the Adani Group, one of the largest business conglomerates in India. Adani is worth $69.8bn, according to Forbes magazine, and is the world’s 25th richest and India’s second-richest person.

Adani is a native of Gujarat – the state that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is from. As a college dropout, Adani left his father’s textile trade to set up a commodities trading business in 1988, marking his first solo sojourn into business.

Now, the sprawling Adani conglomerate operates everything from airports to cement production, with at least seven Adani Group firms listed on Indian stock exchanges and some 23,000 people employed.

The Adani Group controls several airports, as well as the country’s largest private port – the Mundra Port in Gujarat. In January 2023, it led a consortium that bought Israel’s Haifa port for $1.15bn.

The Adani Group supplies electricity to neighbouring Bangladesh and controls the controversial Carmichael coalmine in Australia, which is a lightning rod for climate change activists. It also owns controlling stakes in India’s NDTV news.

However, the billionaire’s super-fast rise in the business world has been overshadowed by allegations of crony capitalism and is tightly linked to PM Modi’s own rise as a politician, analysts say.

Many have accused Adani of benefitting from Modi’s support, dating back to when the PM was the chief minister of Gujarat when Adani bought land at cheap prices. Some also accuse Indian state firms of being complicit in allegations of corruption that has favoured Adani.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a journalist who has investigated Adani, told Al Jazeera that Adani is “extremely close to PM Modi, and that the prime minister has often promoted Adani’s businesses overseas.

“If you track the rise of Mr Narendra Modi, his political career, and you look at the rise of the businesses of the Adani conglomerate, I mean, they match. His proximity [to Modi] is more than what we’ve ever seen before…they are like twin brothers,” he said.

In the past, Adani has often denied allegations of corruption or favouritism. In 2014, for example, when Modi was campaigning for election as prime minister and used a private jet belonging to Adani, the businessman told reporters that he was not looking for favours by supporting the politician.

Right now, the Adani Group is facing hurdles in Bangladesh, where officials are mulling an electricity supply contract agreed under former President Sheikh Hasina, an ally of Modi. Hasina was ousted in August after massive youth-led protests broke out against her government’s plans to secure job quotas for relatives of veterans who fought in the independence war against Pakistan in 1971.

In September, Kenyan workers protested about the group’s intended 30-year lease of the country’s main airport, fearing massive layoffs. On Thursday, Kenyan President William Ruto cancelled the deal, following the US indictments.

Workers at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Kenya’s capital Nairobi go on strike to protest the government’s plan to lease the airport to the Indian Adani Group, in Nairobi, Kenya on September 11, 2024 [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

What was the Hindenburg Research report?

In a January 2023 report,  US-based forensic financial research firm Hindenburg alleged that the Adani Group had been engaged in a “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades”. 

The report was undertaken for the benefit of short-sell investment clients and was published on the website of Hindenburg Research. As a short-sell firm, Hindenburg makes money by taking positions in companies whose values are likely to fall. That decline can be hastened when investigations like this one are published.

Hindenburg claimed it had investigated the Adani Group for two years and reviewed thousands of documents, conducted site visits in almost half a dozen countries and spoken with dozens of individuals including former senior executives of the conglomerate. Some of the report’s allegations included that:

• Some of Adani’s companies had “substantial debt” and were close to liquidation.
• Adani family members created offshore shell entities in tax-haven jurisdictions including Mauritius, the United Arab Emirates and several Caribbean islands, generating forged import/export documentation to create fake or illegitimate turnover and siphon money from the group’s listed companies.
• The Adani Group was using firms in tax havens to inflate revenue and stock prices to make its listed entities appear more creditworthy.
• The group had “virtually non-existent financial controls” and had changed chief financial officers five times in eight years, an accounting red flag.
• Shah Dhandaria, an independent auditor for some of the Adani Group companies, had no website and “hardly seems capable of complex audit work”.

What happened after the Hindenburg report?

Following the report’s release online, Adani Group’s shares plunged in value by about $112bn, and billionaire Adani went from being the world’s third-richest man on Forbes to the 25th now.

In a 413-page rebuttal, the conglomerate denied Hindenburg’s allegations and labelled it a “malicious combination of selective misinformation”.

Opposition parties in India demanded an investigation into state-run companies believed to have business relations with Adani, such as the State Bank of India.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) duly launched an investigation. In March 2023, India’s Supreme Court also set up an independent inquiry into the Hindenburg report. However, in May, the court’s investigative panel said it had found no evidence of fraud.

In January 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the conglomerate would not face separate investigations by the court based on the panel report, although the SEBI probe is ongoing. Following the court’s decision, Adani Group’s shares recovered and, by the end of January 2024, Adani was named the richest person in India, according to Bloomberg.

In August 2024, Hindenburg released a new report, this time accusing Madhabi Puri Buch, the chairwoman of the SEBI, of having a conflict of interest that prevented an in-depth probe into Adani. Buch and her husband, the report alleged, had also held offshore funds used by the Adani Group. The SEBI chair refuted the allegations.

What happens next?

Wednesday’s indictment in the US is a notification of the allegations only, meaning that Adani and his associates are still presumed innocent.

Prosecutors now plan to hand those warrants to foreign law enforcement, according to Reuters news agency.

While the US could try to have all defendants extradited for a trial, it is unclear if the Indian government would allow it. Under the extradition treaty between the US and India, extraditions can be made if they are for charges that would result in imprisonment for more than one year in both countries.

It is unclear when a trial in the US might start or if Adani would have to be present.

According to analysts, Adani also enjoys close ties to US President-elect Donald Trump. Some suggest Trump could put a stop to the case, but it’s yet unclear if Trump would want to be involved, or if his powers as president would let him. In November, following the US elections, Adani congratulated Trump on his win in a post on X. He also promised to invest $10bn in US energy projects.

Meanwhile, India’s opposition Congress Party leader Gandhi has demanded Adani’s arrest in India and has also called out the SEBI Chair, Buch.

“We demand that Adani be immediately arrested,” Gandhi told a news conference in the capital, Delhi. “But we know that won’t happen, as Modi is protecting him.”