Indian billionaire Gautam Adani struck a combative tone in his first public remarks since US prosecutors indicted him in a US$250 million bribery scheme, saying “every attack” makes his conglomerate stronger.
In his first public appearance since the indictment became public on Nov. 21, Asia’s second-richest man said no one in his conglomerate faces US charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) or conspiracy to obstruct justice, and that he is working through the legal process “to reconfirm our absolute commitment to world-class regulatory compliance.”
“This is not the first time we have faced such challenges,” Adani said in prepared remarks to a jewelry award ceremony in Jaipur, India, on Saturday. “What I can tell you is that every attack makes us stronger and every obstacle becomes a stepping stone for a more resilient Adani Group.”
Photo: REUTERS
The indictment has roiled Adani stocks, prompted Adani Green Energy Ltd to scrap a US$600 million dollar bond and triggered a query from India’s market regulator.
US prosecutors allege Adani and associates lied to US investors about their anti-bribery practices while promising more than US$250 million in bribes to Indian officials to win solar-energy contracts.
Adani company executives are charged with three counts of fraud. Other defendants are charged with violating the FCPA, which bars US-linked entities from bribing foreign officials.
Adani on Saturday blamed “a lot of the vested reporting” for spreading “negativity” about the nature of the US charges.
Adani Group has denied the allegations and said it would defend itself in court.
He also cited a “short-selling attack initiated from abroad” — a reference to a Hindenburg Research report in January last year — which alleged wide-ranging corporate fraud, causing a plunge in its companies’ shares. The Adani Group denied any wrongdoing.
The challenges “have made us tougher,” Adani said in his prepared remarks.
FCPA investigations can typically take years.
Adani Green said on Wednesday it faces yet to be determined monetary penalties under a civil complaint.
The group said separately that it suffered an erosion of nearly US$55 billion in market value across 11 listed companies after the US indictment.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
JOINT EFFORTS: MediaTek would partner with Denso to develop custom chips to support the car-part specialist company’s driver-assist systems in an expanding market MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s largest mobile phone chip designer, yesterday said it is working closely with Japan’s Denso Corp to build a custom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) solution tailored for advanced driver-assistance systems and cockpit systems, adding another customer to its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business. This effort merges Denso’s automotive-grade safety expertise and deep vehicle integration with MediaTek’s technologies cultivated through the development of Media- Tek’s Dimensity AX, leveraging efficient, high-performance SoCs and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to offer a scalable, production-ready platform for next-generation driver assistance, the company said in a statement yesterday. “Through this collaboration, we are bringing two
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
RSS