Why it's a rocky road ahead for Adani Group
India TodayGautam Adani’s biographer calls him ‘destiny’s child’. However, a US court indictment which said that, starting in 2020, top honchos of Azure Power—an Indian solar power producer that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange—connived with Adani and two of his senior executives to give $265 million in bribes to government officials across five Indian states in return for solar power contracts, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges of concealing these alleged wrongdoings from investors have been the biggest jolt so far. THE BIG KICKBACK CASE The 54-page November 20 indictment by the US District Court–Eastern District of New York said Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, Adani Green Energy CEO Vneet S. Jaain and four executives of Azure Power bribed officials of electricity distribution companies in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Jammu & Kashmir—to execute power sale agreements under the manufacturing-linked project with the Solar Energy Corporation of India, the nodal agency for implementation of renewable energy projects. “SECI agreed to buy power from Adani and Azure at off-market, high prices which state discoms weren’t buying. “The indictment of several Indian companies and SECI raises disturbing concerns not only about large-scale corporate corruption that evidently prevails in India and the US but also how fraudulent policies adopted by the Union power ministry at the instance of favoured business conglomerates have defrauded electricity consumers across the country,” says E.A.S.