US charges billionaire Gautam Adani with defrauding investors

recent YORK — An Indian businessman who is one of the globe’s richest people has been indicted in the U.S. on charges he duped investors by concealing that his business’s huge solar vigor assignment on the subcontinent was being facilitated by an alleged bribery scheme.

Gautam Adani, 62, was charged in an indictment unsealed Wednesday with financial instruments fraud and conspiracy to commit financial instruments and wire fraud. The case involves a lucrative arrangement for Adani Green vigor Ltd. and another firm to sell 12 gigawatts of solar power to the Indian government — enough to light millions of homes and businesses.

The indictment portrays Adani and his co-defendants of playing two sides of the deal.

It accuses them of portraying it as rosy and above-board to Wall Street investors who poured several billion dollars into the assignment while, back in India, they were paying or planning to pay about $265 million in bribes to government officials in swap for billions of dollars’ worth of contracts and capitalization.

Adani and his co-defendants allegedly sought to “obtain and finance massive state vigor supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the outlay of U.S. investors,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller said.

In a parallel civil action, the U.S. financial instruments and swap fee accused Adani and two co-defendants of violating antifraud provisions of U.S. financial instruments laws. The regulator is seeking monetary penalties and other sanctions.

Both cases were filed in federal court in Brooklyn. Adani’s co-defendants include his nephew Sagar Adani, the executive director of Adani Green vigor’s board, and Vneet Jaain, who was the business’s chief executive from 2020 to 2023 and remains managing director of its board.

Online court records did not list lawyers who could talk on the defendants’ behalf. An email communication seeking comment was left with an arm of Adani’s business, the Adani throng.

Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said Gautam and Sagar Adani are accused of persuading investors to buy their business’s bonds by misrepresenting “not only that Adani Green had a robust anti-bribery lawful operation program but also that the business’s elder management had not and would not pay or commitment to pay bribes.”

Adani is a power player in the globe’s most populous country. He built his fortune in the coal business in the 1990s. The Adani throng grew to involve many aspects of Indian life, from making defense equipment to building roads to selling cooking oil.

In recent years, Adani has made large moves into renewable vigor, embracing a philosophy of sustainable growth reflected in its slogan: “Growth with Goodness.”

Last year, a U.S.-based financial research firm accused Adani and his business of “brazen distribute manipulation” and “monetary reporting fraud.” The Adani throng called the claims “a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations.”

The firm in question is known as a short-seller, a Wall Street term for traders that essentially bet on the prices of sure stocks to fall, and it had made such investments in relation to the Adani throng.