Indian billionaire Gautam Adani is in Kenya. On Wednesday, the 20th, at 3:00 PM, Gautam Adani arrived in Kenya and proceeded to a private residence in Karen for an undisclosed meeting.
According to sources, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani bypassed the common immigration services, making it impossible to detect if he entered the country without proper verification.
On the same day, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had accused Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and several executives in New York for their alleged participation in a multi-billion dollar fraud conspiracy involving plans to create a huge solar power facility.
According to the authorities, Adani, a significant friend of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, together with seven other executives, including his nephew Sagar Adani, committed to convincing Indian government officials to pay them more than $250 million in bribes in order to obtain solar energy contracts.
More than a year after a shortseller in the United States accused Adani Group of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, the charges quickly had an effect on the enormous business.
Shares of the group’s publicly traded companies saw a decline of 10.0% to 20% on Thursday.
In addition, it has caused political ripples inside India, with the Indian National Congress, which is a competitor of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reiterating its demands for a parliamentary probe into Adani’s businesses.
Officials from the United States assert that the solar energy supply contracts would create more than $2 billion in earnings after taxes over a period of twenty years.
In order to develop the idea, which took place between the years 2020 and 2024, the authorities claim that Adani, who is 62 years old, personally met with an official from the Indian government.
The defendants reportedly met on a regular basis and exchanged information on the bribery plot, including evidence that was found on many phones.
The Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller issued a statement on Wednesday, stating that the indictment “alleges conspiracies to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to falsify to investors and banks in order to obtain billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice.”
She continued, “According to the allegations, senior executives and directors committed these offenses in order to win and fund major state energy supply contracts through the use of corruption and fraud, at the expense of US investors.”
Adani is the second-richest person in Asia, after Mukesh Ambani, who is also a countryman, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. Adani’s wealth exceeds $85 billion. He is the primary creator of the Adani Group, which is a large Indian conglomerate.
Specifically, the Department of Justice said that Adani and his accomplices attempted to conceal the alleged bribery schemes from investors in the United States “in order to secure finance, including to fund those solar energy supply contracts obtained via bribes.”
The department made reference to a number of documents, such as a mobile phone that was used to monitor particulars about the bribes; a snapshot of a paper that summarized different bribe sums; and PowerPoint and Excel studies that summarized various alternatives for paying and hiding bribe payments.
In a separate action, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also charged both Adanis (in their capacity as executives of Adani Green Energy Ltd.) and Cyril Cabanes, in his capacity as an executive of Azure Power Global, for the bribery scheme that the SEC claimed enabled both companies to profit from a lucrative contract with the Indian government. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Adani Green was able to raise more than $175 million from investors in the United States as a result of such misrepresentations.
Since January 2023, when the United States short-seller Hindenburg Research revealed claims of a “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme,” the millionaire has been making a concerted effort to rehabilitate his image.
This effort has been going on for more than a year. Following the publication of the study, Adani’s wealth, which had reached a point in 2022 when it was greater than that of Jeff Bezos, plunged by more than $80 billion.
The American company had questioned the “sky-high values” of Adani firms and said that their “significant debt” left the whole group “on a shaky financial footing” in their analysis, which Hindenburg claimed took two years to complete.
Hindenburg also stated that the inquiry had taken place. Those who engage in short selling earn money by wagering that the shares of a firm will decrease.
The Adani Group issued a response publication that was four hundred pages long and referred to the Hindenburg study as “nothing but a fraud.”
Diamond dealing was where Adani got his start in the business world. In 1988, he established a company that dealt in the trade of commodities, which would subsequently develop into Adani Enterprises.
Today, he is the owner of businesses in a variety of important industries, including ports, electricity, media, and sustainable energy.
Kenya’s former prime minister, Raila Odinga, praised Adani for doing a legit and excellent job. The Energy CS, Davis Chirchir, seconded Raila Odinga’s statements, asserting that Adani was not a scammer but rather a reputable company.
According to the CS, after conducting a background check for over two years, Adani had no allegations of corruption.
