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Journalism of Courage
Three days after Adani group Chairman Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and six others were indicted in $265 million bribery cases by the US, the conglomerate’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jugeshinder Robbie Singh on Saturday asserted that none of the 11 companies “are subject to indictment”.
US prosecutors in New York on Wednesday charged Chairman Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and six others for allegedly offering Rs 2,029 crore ($265 million) in bribes to Indian government officials for securing “lucrative solar energy supply contracts” with state electricity distribution companies, according to a United States government press release.
“@AdaniOnline has a portfolio of 11 public companies and none are subject to indictment ( ie defendants in any legal proceedings in the recent #DOJ lawyer filings to a court in NYC),” Singh wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.
“None of the issuers ( ie companies in our portfolio or specific issuers that are subsidiaries of the public companies) are accused of any wrongdoing in the said legal filing.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission had also charged Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani, executives of Adani Green Energy Ltd., and Cyril Cabanes, an executive of Azure Power Global Ltd., with conduct arising out of a massive bribery scheme on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the Adani group denied all allegations and called them ‘baseless’.
Singh wrote that there has been a lot of news in the last two days in the Adani group matter.
He said that “this specifically relates to one contract of #adanigreen which is roughly 10% of overall business of Adani Green (there is a lot more precise & comprehensive detail of this which we will elaborate in an appropriate forum)”.
“We became aware of the “specificity” of this 2 days ago. We were aware that something is afoot ( and in Feb 2024 144a offering circular in Risk Factors we disclosed as such. This was first public issuance, of any of our portfolio companies or their subsidiaries or JV companies after our annual results of 31st March 2023),” the Adani group CFO said.
On Thursday, Adani Green Energy called off its $600 million bond offering, after the US indictment of promoter Gautam Adani and others in the bribery case.
Adani Green Energy had planned to use the bond sale’s proceeds to repay foreign-currency loans.
Singh further stated that the group will issue detailed comments after getting approval from its counsel.
