India’s Adani Group yesterday called US charges that their billionaire tycoon founder Gautam Adani had paid more than US$250 million in bribes “baseless,” as the opposition leader demanded his arrest.
The stiff denial came after shares in the industrialist’s conglomerate nosedived nearly 20 percent in Mumbai, the morning after a bombshell indictment in New York accused him of deliberately misleading international investors.
Adani is a close ally of Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was at one point the world’s second-richest man, and critics have long accused him of improperly benefitting from their relationship.
Photo: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / AFP
“The allegations made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against directors of Adani Green are baseless and denied,” the conglomerate said in a statement, adding that “all possible legal recourse will be sought.”
Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the businessmen should be taken into custody.
“We demand that Adani be immediately arrested. But we know that won’t happen as Modi is protecting him,” Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi. “Modi can’t act even if he wants to, because he is controlled by Adani.”
Wednesday’s indictment accuses Adani and multiple subordinates of paying huge sums of more than US$250 million in bribes to Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.
The deals were projected to generate more than US$2 billion in profits after tax over roughly 20 years.
None of the multiple defendants named in the case are in custody.
Adani and two other board members of his Adani Group “lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from US and international investors,” US attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
The indictment drove steep losses in flagship listed unit Adani Enterprises Ltd and multiple other subsidiaries immediately after the Mumbai stock exchange reopened yesterday. The conglomerate’s renewable energy subsidiary, Adani Green Energy Ltd, said it had decided to halt a planned bond sale “in light of these developments.”
Modi’s government has yet to comment on the charges, but a spokesman for his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Amit Malviya, said the indictment appeared to implicate opposition parties rather than his own.
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