Just weeks ago, Gautam Adani, one of the globe’s richest men, celebrated Donald Trump’s election win and announced plans to invest $10bn (£7.9bn) in vigor and infrastructure projects in the US.

Now, the 62-year-ancient Indian billionaire and a close friend of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose sprawling $169bn empire spans ports and renewable vigor, faces US fraud charges that could potentially jeopardise his ambitions at home and abroad.

Federal prosecutors have accused him of orchestrating a $250m bribery scheme and concealing it to raise money in the US. They allege Mr Adani and his executives paid bribes to Indian officials to secure contracts worth $2bn in profits over 20 years. Adani throng has denied the allegations, calling them “baseless.”

But this is already hurting the throng and the Indian economy.

Adani throng firms lost $34bn in economy worth on Thursday, reducing the combined economy capitalisation of its 10 companies to $147bn. Adani Green vigor, which is the firm at the centre of the allegations, also said it wouldn’t proceed with a $600m predictable returns offering.

Then there are questions about the impact of the charges on India’s business and politics.

India’s economy is deeply intertwined with Mr Adani, the country’s leading infrastructure tycoon. He operates 13 ports (30% economy distribute), seven airports (23% of passenger traffic), and India’s second-largest cement business (20% of the economy).

With six coal-fired power plants, Mr Adani is India’s largest private player in power. At the same period, he has pledged to invest $50bn in green hydrogen and runs a 8,000km (4,970 miles)-long natural gas pipeline. He’s also building India’s longest expressway and redeveloping India’s largest slum. He employs over 45,000 people, but his businesses impact millions nationwide.

• Gautam Adani: Asia’s richest man

Mr Adani’s global ambitions span coal mines in Indonesia and Australia, airport and vigor projects in Kenya and Morocco. The throng is eyeing more than a billion dollars in infrastructure projects across Tanzania and Kenya.

Mr Adani’s holdings closely mirrors Modi’s policy priorities, beginning with infrastructure and more recently expanding into tidy vigor. He has thrived despite critics labeling his business empire as crony capitalism, pointing to his close ties with Modi, both as Gujarat’s chief minister – where they both hail from – and as India’s prime minister. (Like any successful businessman, Mr Adani has also forged ties with many opposition leaders, investing in their states.)

“This [the bribery allegations] is large. Mr Adani and Modi have been inseparable for a long period. This is going to influence the political economy of India,” says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an Indian journalist who has written extensively on the business throng.

This crisis also comes as Mr Adani has spent nearly two years trying to rebuild his image after US short-seller Hindenburg Research’s 2023 update accused his conglomerate of decades of distribute manipulation and fraud. Though Mr Adani denied the claims, the allegations triggered a economy sell-off and an ongoing investigation by India’s economy regulator, SEBI.

“Mr Adani has been trying to rehabilitate his image, and try to display that those earlier fraud allegations leveled by the Hindenburg throng were not factual, and his business and his businesses had actually been doing quite well. There’d been a number of recent deals and investments made over the last year or so, and so this is just a body blow coming to this billionaire who had done a very excellent job of shaking off the potential damage of those earlier allegations,” Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, an American ponder-tank, told the BBC.

For now, raising financing at home may prove challenging for Mr Adani’s funds-guzzling projects.

“The economy reaction shows how solemn this is,” Ambareesh Baliga, an independent economy analyst, told the BBC. “Adanis will still secure financing for their major projects, but with delays.”

The latest charges could also throw a spanner in Mr Adani’s global expansion plans. He has been already challenged in Kenya and Bangladesh over a planned takeover of an international airport and a controversial vigor deal. “This [bribery charges] stops international expansion plans linked to the US,” Nirmalya Kumar, Lee Kong Chian Professor at Singapore Management University, told the BBC.

What’s next? Politically, opposition chief Rahul Gandhi has unsurprisingly called for Mr Adani’s arrest and promised to stir up parliament. “Bribing government officials in India is not information, but the amounts mentioned are staggering. I suspect the US has names of some of those who were the intended recipients. This has potential reverberations for the Indian political scene. There is more to arrive,” Mr Kumar believes.

Mr Adani’s throng will undoubtedly assemble a top-tier legal defence. “For now, we have only the indictment, leaving much still to unfold,” says Mr Kugelman.

While the US-India business connection may face scrutiny, it’s unlikely to be significantly impacted, particularly given the recent $500m US deal with Mr Adani for a port assignment in Sri Lanka, says Mr Kugelman. Despite the solemn allegations, broader US-India business ties remain powerful.

“The US-India business connection is a very large and multifaceted one. Even with these very solemn allegations against someone that’s such a major player in the Indian economy, I don’t ponder we should overstate the impact that this could have on that connection,” Mr Kugelman says.

Also, it’s ambiguous if Mr Adani can be targeted, despite the US-India extradition treaty, as it depends on whether the recent administration allows the cases to proceed. Mr Baliga believes it is not doom and gloom for the Adanis. “I still do ponder foreign investors and banks will back them like they did post Hindenburg though, given that they are part of very significant, well performing sectors of the Indian economy,” he says.

“The sense in the economy is also that this will perhaps blow over and be sorted out, once the [Donald] Trump administration takes over.”