Adani aware of probe a year ago… told markets news false: Indictment

The FBI had also handed Sagar Adani a search warrant and served him with a grand jury subpoena. If not Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani definitely knew about the bribery probe, the indictment suggests. It said the “search warrant further described certain evidence subject to seizure, including evidence ‘related to the payment of or an offer to pay, bribes, kickbacks or provide or offer to provide any other thing of value to Indian government officials in order to obtain or retain business advantages’”.

The indictment alleged that the very next day, “on or around March 18, 2023,” Gautam Adani emailed himself photographs of each page of the search warrant and grand jury subpoena served on his nephew. It said despite knowing some of the “subject offenses and individuals under investigation by the US government”, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani “not only concealed the bribery scheme from financial institutions and investors in the US and elsewhere but also caused others to make false and misleading statements regarding their awareness and knowledge of the US government’s investigations and its subjects.”

Before all this happened, almost exactly a year ago, on March 17, 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent a “general inquiry” to Azure Power Global, then listed on the New York Stock Exchange, seeking details of all contracts it had won since 2018, complaints under the US anti-bribery law Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and investigations and the solicitation of anything of value by or on behalf of foreign government officials.

The indictment alleged that Cyril Cabanes and four of his colleagues including a “co-conspirator” at Canadian pension fund CDPQ persuaded Azure Global Power in August 2022 to initiate an internal investigation by a US law firm. In this investigation and even in US government probes, they concealed information about their own involvement in the bribery scheme but revealed that Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain (CEO of Adani Green Energy) requested bribe money, according to the indictment.

Between March 2023 and July 2023, Cabanes and his four CDPQ colleagues met representatives from the FBI, Department of Justice and the SEC in New York. The kind of information that SEC had for it to nail Adani included details like a “reading out aloud” of Azure’s share of bribes promised or made to Indian state government officials by the Adanis.

The SEC complaint referred to a WhatsApp exchange where the Azure Power Global chairman and Cabanes used the code name “SAG” or “Super Aggregator” as references to Gautam Adani. The US indictment, on the other hand, mentioned that Cabanes and his associates referred to Gautam Adani as “Mr.A”, “Numero uno” and “the big man”.

In a statement Thursday to the press, the Adani Group said all the allegations were “baseless and denied”.

“The charges in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty,” it said. “All possible legal recourse will be sought,” it said.