Adani and 7 others: Who are the defendants in the $265 mn bribery case in the US?

Sagar R Adani, Vneet S. Jaain, Ranjit Gupta, Rupesh Agarwal, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, and Deepak Malhotra: What have these individuals been accused of?

Industrialist Gautam Adani during the Vibrant Gujarat summit in Gandhinagar in 2024. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)

Written by: Hitesh Vyas

5 min readMumbaiNov 22, 2024 05:26 AM IST First published on: Nov 21, 2024 at 08:05 PM IST

Prosecutors in New York have accused Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani and seven others of alleged “schemes to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice”, according to a United States government press release.

Besides Adani, the other defendants named in the indictment dated October 24 (unsealed late at night on November 20 India time) are: Sagar R Adani, Vneet S. Jaain, Ranjit Gupta, Rupesh Agarwal, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, and Deepak Malhotra.

Who are these persons and what are the allegations against them?

Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain

Gautam Adani is chairman and founder of the Adani Group, the ports-to-airport conglomerate. He is also the chairman of Adani Green Energy Ltd.
Sagar Adani, the nephew of Gautam Adani, is the executive director of Adani Green Energy.
Vneet Jaain is the managing director of Adani Green Energy, and has been associated with the Adani Group for more than 15 years.

Charges against them:

“Gautam S Adani and seven other business executives allegedly bribed the Indian government to finance lucrative contracts designed to benefit their businesses. Adani and other defendants also defrauded investors by raising capital on the basis of false statements about bribery and corruption, while still other defendants allegedly attempted to conceal the bribery conspiracy by obstructing the government’s investigation,” the press release said, quoting James E. Dennehy, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), who announced the charges along with Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Lisa H. Miller, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“On several occasions, Gautam S Adani personally met with an Indian government official to advance the Bribery Scheme, and the defendants held in-person meetings with each other to discuss aspects of its execution,” the press release said.

Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and Jaain conspired to “misrepresent the Indian Energy Company’s (a reference to Adani Green Energy Ltd) anti-bribery and corruption practices and conceal the Bribery Scheme from US investors and international financial institutions in order to obtain financing, including to fund those solar energy supply contracts procured through bribery,” the release alleged.

Explained | Behind Adani investigations: multiple US agencies, Indian-American officials

The three defendants caused Adani Green and some of its subsidiaries to “raise capital on the basis of false and misleading statements in connection with (i) two US dollar-denominated syndicate loans totaling more than $2 billion from lender groups comprised of international financial institutions and US-based investors; and (ii) two Rule 144A bond offerings for more than $1 billion underwritten by international financial institutions, which were marketed and sold to investors in the US, among other places”.

Also, “they caused the Indian Energy Company to make false statements in their consolidated financial statements and to the market and investors regarding the Bribery Scheme”, the release said.

According to the indictment, Sagar Adani used his cellphone to “track specific details of the bribes offered and promised to government officials”. Jaain allegedly used his cellphone “to photograph a document summarizing various bribe amounts the US Issuer owed the Indian Energy Company for its respective portion of the bribes”.

Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal

Ranjit Gupta was the CEO of Azure Power Global Ltd between 2019 and 2022. Azure has been named in a second, civil complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as the company that “agreed to pay a portion of those bribes and Defendants were also personally involved in collecting payment from Azure”. The Justice Department press release refers to Azure as “a renewable-energy company with securities that had traded on the New York Stock Exchange”. The company was delisted in November 2023, according to the SEC complaint.
Rupesh Agarwal worked with Azure Power between 2022 and 2023.

Charges against them:

As per the US Attorney’s Office, Rupesh Agarwal “prepared and distributed to other defendants multiple analyses using PowerPoint and Excel that summarized various options for paying and concealing bribe payments (Bribery Analyses)”.

He, along with other defendants Cabanes, Agarwal, and Malhotra, “conspired to obstruct the grand jury, FBI and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations into the Bribery Scheme”, according to the press release.

Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra

Cabanes, a citizen of Australia and France, and Indian citizens Agarwal and Malhotra worked for the Canadian pension fund CDPQ, which owned a large stake in Azure.

Charges against them:

Cabanes, Agarwal and Malhotra have been indicted for “conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with a bribery scheme also perpetrated by Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain”, the press release said.

The three former executives of the Canadian institutional investor, along with Rupesh Agarwal, have been charged with “conspiracy to obstruct justice”, according to the press release.