By Aditi Shah, Aditya Kalra
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A U.S. bribery indictment against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is linked to an Adani Green Energy contract that accounts for about 10% of its revenue, and no other company in the conglomerate is accused of wrongdoing, said the group’s CFO. on Saturday.
On Wednesday, Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest men, and seven others were charged by U.S. prosecutors with fraud for their alleged role in a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian officials to secure energy supply deals.
Adani has denied all the allegations, calling them “baseless”.
Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh on Saturday sought to defend the allegations, saying none of Adani’s eleven listed companies are “subject to any indictment” or “accused of any wrongdoing in the said legal filing”.
The allegations in the US indictment relate to “one contract of Adani Green, which represents approximately 10% of Adani Green’s total revenue,” Singh said on X.
The US prosecutor’s indictment is the biggest setback for India’s Adani Group, which was hit last year by Hindenburg Research’s allegations of improper use of foreign tax havens, the company claims.
The US indictment has already had a significant impact on the company.
The group entity’s shares have plummeted, some global banks are considering temporarily halting new lending to Adani and Kenya has canceled two deals with Adani worth more than $2.5 billion.
Adani, which has several other global projects, is also accused of misleading US investors about Adani Green’s compliance with anti-bribery principles and laws.
Singh said on Saturday that they only became aware of the “specificity” of the US charges two days ago.
“We were aware that something was going on,” he said, adding that the company also disclosed this to investors in its $750 million bond issue in 2024, of which about $175 million was raised in financial institutions in the United States.
However, the US indictment says the bond issue “contained false and misleading assurances about, among other things, the corporate governance” of the Indian Energy Company (Adani Green) and touted “maintaining transparency and compliance in every aspect ‘.”
The allegations also put a spotlight on Sagar Adani, a director at Adani Green and millennial scion of the company, who kept hundreds of millions of dollars in alleged bribes to Indian officials on his cell phone.
Singh said the group would provide a more detailed comment once it receives regulatory approval as the matter is before the court.
(Reporting by Aditi Shah and Aditya Kalra; Editing by William Mallard, Christopher Cushing and Sam Holmes)
