New Delhi: In a bid to create a “false impression” of transparency and good governance, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani’s business partners tried to deflect US authorities’ attention from themselves, and tried to place the blame for the alleged bribery case entirely on Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, the indictment has revealed.
A US court late Wednesday night (India time) indicted Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and several others for allegedly planning to offer Rs 2,029 crore of bribes to state government officials in India, as well as conspiring to hide this from US investors who lent money to the company, and obstructing investigation by US authorities into the matter.
Gautam Adani’s nephew Sagar Adani is an executive director on the board of Adani Green Energy Limited and Vneet Jaain is the managing director and CEO of Adani Green Energy Ltd.
The Adani Group in a statement issued Thursday categorically denied the allegations, terming them “baseless”.
Other people mentioned in the indictment include Cyril Cabanes, a former member of the board of directors at Azure Power, the other energy company implicated in the indictment. Cabanes was also previously a senior executive at Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ).
The indictment also mentions Saurabh Agarwal, the pension fund’s former India MD, Deepak Malhotra, its former director of infrastructure for South Asia, Rupesh Agarwal, a former CEO of Azure Power, and an unnamed co-conspirator who is a former non-executive chairman of Azure Power.
In March 2022, as part of its investigation into the bribery case, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent a “general inquiry” request to Azure Power, which included requests for information about all contracts the company had bid on or won since 2018.
“To accomplish the objectives of the ongoing Bribery Scheme, beginning in or about 2022, the defendants Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal, and Co-Conspirator #1, agreed to suppress documents, conceal information and provide false information to the United States government for the purpose of obstructing, influencing and interfering with the Government Investigations,” the indictment document said.
Further, “to create the false appearance of transparency and good governance” these defendants in August 2022 had the board of directors of Azure Power to initiate an internal investigation run by a law firm headquartered in the United States and supervised by a sub-committee of the board of directors.
Part of this ‘obstruction scheme’, the indictment said, was to withhold key information about the bribery scheme from the internal investigation and the US government investigations.
It seems another part of this obstruction was to reveal the names of the Adani Group executives as being part of the bribery scheme while protecting themselves.
“In addition, (Cyril) Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, (Deepak) Malhotra, Rupesh Agarwal and Co-Conspirator #1 made and agreed to make certain selective disclosures in connection with the internal investigation and the government investigations—namely, revealing the defendants Gautam S. Adani’s, Sagar R. Adani’s and Vneet S. Jaain’s requests for bribe money but concealing their own participation in the bribery scheme.”
The indictment said the strategy employed by the defendants was to create the appearance that the co-conspirators were reporting misconduct rather than perpetrating the misconduct. This, in turn, aided the co-conspirators’ efforts to further the ongoing bribery scheme and to conceal its true nature from the board of directors and the government investigations.
In addition, the indictment alleged that since 2022 Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Malhotra, Rupesh Agarwal and the unnamed co-conspirator took “numerous additional steps” to conceal their own participation in the bribery scheme and interfere with the government investigations.
These included destroying and otherwise concealing evidence, including a PowerPoint analysis and electronic communications.
Also Read: ‘Vindicated’ by Adani’s US indictment, Rahul says Modi can’t arrest him. ‘He controls BJP funding’
Adani is now an internationl financial fraud, there is at least one cut the clutter denfendimg adani, and Gupta ji conntinued defending adani. Keep up the good work Print team.