How Gautam Adani's alleged bribery scheme unfolded

US authorities say he bribed officials in India to secure deals for solar power

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NEW YORK - In June 2020, a renewable energy company owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani won what it called the single largest solar development bid ever awarded: An agreement to supply eight gigawatts of electricity to a state-owned power company.

But there was a problem. Local power players did not want to pay the prices the state company was offering, jeopardizing the deal, according to the US authorities. To save the deal, Adani allegedly decided to bribe local officials to persuade them to buy the electricity.

That allegation is at the heart of US criminal and civil charges unsealed on Nov 20 against Adani, who is not in US custody and is believed to be in India. His company, Adani Group, said the charges are "baseless" and that it will seek "all possible legal recourse".

The alleged hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes promised to local Indian officials caught the attention of the US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Adani's companies were raising funds from US-based investors in several transactions starting in 2021.

This account of how the alleged scheme unfolded is drawn from federal prosecutors' 54-page criminal indictment of Adani and seven of his associates and two parallel civil SEC complaints, which extensively cite electronic messages among the scheme's alleged participants.

In early 2020, the Solar Energy Corporation of India awarded Adani Green Energy and another company, Azure Power Global, contracts for a 12-gigawatt solar energy project, expected to yield billions of dollars in revenue for both companies, according to the indictment.

It was a major step forward for Adani Green Energy, run by Adani's nephew Sagar Adani. Up until that point, the company had earned only roughly US$50 million (S$67 million) in its history and had yet to turn a profit, according to the SEC complaint.