By Kashish Tandon and Hritam Mukherjee
(Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors have charged Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, founder of a conglomerate named after him, and seven others in an alleged bribery and fraud scheme related to a renewable energy project in India.
The authorities said Adani and the other defendants agreed to pay about $265 million in bribes to Indian officials to obtain contracts. The Adani Group denied the charges as baseless and that it would seek “all possible legal recourse”.
Here are key details of the people charged by the U.S. authorities:
** Gautam Adani, 62, is Asia’s wealthiest person after countryman Mukesh Ambani with a net worth of $57.8 billion, according to Forbes. He set up the Adani Group in 1988, beginning with commodities trading.
He and his nephew Sagar are accused of orchestrating the scheme to secure a solar energy project in India and misleading the company’s investors during a $750 million bond offering, which raised about $175 million from U.S. investors.
** Sagar Adani is credited with building the solar and wind portfolio of Adani Green Energy and currently oversees its “organization building as well as all strategic and financial matters”, according to its website. He is an executive director of Adani Green.
** Vneet Jaain has been the managing director of Adani Green Energy since 2020. Before that, he headed other Adani group firms such as Adani Power and Adani Infrastructure, according to his LinkedIn profile.
** Ranjit Gupta, between 2019 and 2022, was the chief executive officer of energy firm Azure Power Global, whose stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange until November 2023.
U.S. authorities allege that Gupta conspired with Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain to pay bribes to Indian government officials for Adani Green and Azure Power to secure a solar energy project in India.
Azure Power did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Gupta, currently CEO of energy firm Ocior Energy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ocior Energy did not immediately respond to a separate Reuters request for comment.
** Cyril Cabanes, who U.S. court documents said was a citizen of Australia and France who resided in Singapore, was the managing director of infrastructure overseeing Asia Pacific and Middle East regions at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a Canadian investment firm, between 2016 and 2023.
The indictment document said that an unnamed unit of CDPQ is the top stakeholder of Azure Power.
