US Charges Indian Executives, Including Billionaire, With Bribing Indian Gov't Officials
The U.S charged seven Indian businessmen with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to Indian government officials to receive "lucrative solar energy supply contracts with the Indian government," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York announced. The indictment, unsealed Nov. 20, also outlines various securities and wire fraud charges against the businessmen and names Gautam Adani, one of the world's richest people, as a defendant.
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From around 2020 to 2024, the businessmen allegedly agreed to pay over $250 million in bribes to obtain the solar energy supply contracts, which were projected to produce over $2 billion in profits over a 20-year period, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Adani, chairman of the global conglomerate the Adani Group, personally met with an Indian government official to carry out the scheme, DOJ said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office alleged that the businessmen frequently met with the government officials and sent messages organizing the scheme on an "electronic messaging application" and documented the scheme on their cellphones. For instance, Adani Group executives Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain tracked specific details of the bribes offered to the officials, the DOJ alleged.
Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain also allegedly conspired to misrepresent the Adani Group's anti-corruption practices and hide the bribes from U.S. investors to obtain financing, the indictment said. The trio caused the conglomerate and some of its subsidiaries "to raise capital on the basis of false and misleading statements" related to loans totaling over $2 billion from lender groups made up of U.S. investors and institutions, and two bond offerings totaling over $1 billion underwritten by international financial firms, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
DOJ added that executives Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal conspired to obstruct probes into the bribery scheme, deleting emails, electronic messages and analyses of the bribes.