Billionaire Gautam Adani Charged in New York With Multi-billion-dollar Fraud and Bribery Scheme

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and other executives of the Adani Group have been indicted in New York for roles in a multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme and were charged with wire and securities fraud. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York said Adani and seven other senior business executives “promised more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy contracts for Adani Green Energy.” The renewable energy company majority-owned by Adani Group, then “tried to raise money from U.S. and international investors with a 2021 bond offering based on false and misleading statements about the firm’s anti-corruption and anti-bribery efforts,” the U.S. attorney’s office added.

The Washington Post noted that the alleged bribery scheme which took place from 2020 to 2024, was “projected to make Adani’s business $2 billion in profits over a two-decade period,” according to The Washington Post.

Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and company executive Vneet Jaain were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and substantive securities fraud. Four of Adani’s business associates — Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal — were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for attempting to conceal the illegal activities and their knowledge of crimes from investigators.

According to the complaint, Gautam and Sagar Adani were engaged in the bribery scheme during a September 2021 note offering by Adani Green that raised $750 million, including approximately $175 million from U.S. investors. During this same period, Gautam, Sagar Adani and Jaain allegedly conspired to misrepresent the Indian Energy Company’s anti-bribery and corruption practices and conceal the Bribery Scheme from U.S. investors and international financial institutions in order to obtain financing, including funding those solar energy supply contracts procured through bribery. 

Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal are accused of destroying evidence and trying to mislead federal investigators who were looking into Adani-related corruption. They agreed to delete electronic materials related to the bribery scheme, including emails, electronic messages, and bribery analyses. Additionally, they caused the U.S. Issuer’s Board of Directors to initiate an internal investigation into the bribery scheme and then withheld material information from that investigation. They later falsely denied their participation in the bribery scheme to representatives of the FBI, DOJ and SEC at meetings in Brooklyn, New York.  For this conduct, they are all charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has also filed a parallel civil case saying Adani Green Energy raised more than $175 million from U.S. investors. One of Adani’s associates was charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits companies that operate in the United States from bribing foreign officials.

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Adani was once Asia’s richest man — and briefly the world’s second-richest person. Last year, Hindenburg Research accused Adani and his companies of financial fraud and stock market manipulation. The firm that investigates companies to discover potential shortfalls or wrongdoing and then short their stocks, alleged that Adani had artificially inflated the share prices of his companies by using shell companies linked to his family members. The Adani Group has denied any wrongdoing. The company’s shares, which had plummeted following the Hindenburg report, recovered substantially after India’s Supreme Court ruled in the group’s favor a year later. 

Adani has also come under scrutiny and criticism for his close ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported that this connection has helped Adani’s company win lucrative contracts. Scroll has previously reported that “in some instances, the government has changed bidding rules to help the company gain control of airports.”

Adani has “rejected claims of special treatment,” as per The New York Times, “saying the foundations of his business were laid when the Indian government relaxed trade restrictions in the 1980s, long before Modi led the country.”