In a far-reaching criminal case, in November 2024, the Justice Department unsealed a complex, five-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York charging eight defendants, including Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, executives of the Adani Group, a large Indian renewable-energy company, with conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements.

In addition to the three Adani Group energy company executives, the Justice Department’s indictment charges Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal, former executives of a renewable-energy company with securities that had traded on the New York Stock Exchange (the U.S. Issuer), and Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra, former employees of a Canadian institutional investor, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with a bribery scheme also perpetrated by Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, involving one of the world’s largest solar energy projects.

Guatum Adani is the chairman of the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate, and is one of the richest billionaires in the world.  The Adani Group executives own and control the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate, and its subsidiary Adani Green Energy Ltd., an Indian renewable energy company — Ranjit Gupta, Cyril Cabanes, Deepak Malhotra, Rupesh Agarwal — executives at Azure Power Global Ltd., a renewable energy company headquartered in India — and Saurabh Agarwal, an employee of Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, which is a Canadian pension fund company established by the National Assembly of Quebec and Azure’s largest stockholder.

None of the defendants have been apprehended or made an appearance in the United States federal court in Brooklyn. The defendants are subject to extradition proceedings in India and other countries.  Such a process can take months to resolve and there is no guarantee that the defendants will appear in the United States.

On November 20, 2024, the SEC filed two civil cases in the Eastern District of New York — the first alleged that Gautam and Sagar Adani had violated, and aided and abetted violations of, the Securities Act and Exchange Act, and the second alleged that Cabanes had violated the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA.

The defendants allegedly executed a complex scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors.

In total, the indictment charges the defendants with paying over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice.  The defendants worked together to obtain and finance large state energy supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors. 

As charged in the indictment, between approximately 2020 and 2024, the defendants agreed to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain lucrative solar energy supply contracts with the Indian government, which were projected to generate more than $2 billion in profits.  On several occasions, Gautam S. Adani met with an Indian government official to advance the bribery scheme, and the defendants held in-person meetings with each other and communicated through messaging services to discuss and confirm the scheme. 

The defendants also extensively documented their corrupt efforts:  for example, Sagar R. Adani used his cellular phone to track specific details of the bribes offered and promised to government officials; Vneet S. Jaain used his cellular phone to photograph a document summarizing various bribe amounts the U.S. Issuer owed the Indian Energy Company for its respective portion of the bribes; and 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).

During this same period, Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain conspired to misrepresent and conceal the Adani Group’s bribery from U.S. investors and international financial institutions in order to obtain financing, including to fund those solar energy supply contracts procured through bribery. 

Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain raised large amounts of capital in connection with (i) two U.S. dollar-denominated syndicate loans totaling more than $2 billion from lender groups comprised of international financial institutions and U.S.-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 U.S., among other places. 

The indictment further alleges that Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal conspired to obstruct the grand jury, FBI and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations.  The four defendants agreed to delete electronic materials related to the bribery scheme, including emails, electronic messages and analyses of the bribery scheme and then withheld material information from an internal investigation conducted by the U.S. issuing company.