General
Bribery Charges Against Tycoon Strike at Heart of Modi’s India
The U.S. indictment names Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest businessmen, but it points to an even bigger target: how business is done in India.
Gautam Adani is no ordinary Indian billionaire. Over the past 10 years he has become in effect an extension of India’s government. His conglomerate, Adani Group, builds and buys ports, factories and power plants, often under state contract or license. It operates airports. It even owns a TV news channel.
Mr. Adani’s business empire has become central to India during the rise of Narendra Modi, first elected as prime minister in 2014.
As Mr. Modi brought India to the center of the world stage, he brought Mr. Adani in tow. Today, Mr. Adani’s flagship company is worth about 10 times more than it was at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government charged Mr. Adani, one of the world’s richest people, with multiple counts of fraud. Federal prosecutors accused him and his associates of offering $265 million to Indian officials and lying about the bribery scheme to Wall Street investors when raising money for a massive renewable energy project.
The Adani Group denied prosecutors’ claims, calling the allegations “baseless.” A spokesman said the company wanted to “assure our stakeholders, partners and employees that we are a law-abiding organization, fully compliant with all laws.”
Doubts about the Adani business are not new. Less than two years ago, a small investment firm in New York accused the company of stock manipulation and accounting fraud in what it called “the largest con in corporate history.” Hindenburg Research, a short seller that makes money by betting that stocks will drop, published these claims in a scathing report, which pummeled the prices of Mr. Adani’s stocks and bonds. At one point, Mr. Adani’s empire had lost $150 billion on paper.
