NEW YORK (Reuters) -Gautam Adani, the chair of Indian conglomerate Adani Group and one of the world’s richest people, has been indicted in New York over an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, U.S. prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Authorities charged Adani and two other executives at Adani Green Energy, his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, with agreeing between 2020 and 2024 to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy supply contracts expected to yield $2 billion in profits.
Prosecutors said the renewable energy company also raised more than $3 billion in loans and bonds during this period on the basis of false and misleading statements.
Five other people were hit with related criminal conspiracy charges, including two executives of another renewable energy company, and three employees of a Canadian institutional investor.
Adani Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours in India, where the charges were announced early Thursday morning.
India’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to court records, a judge has issued arrest warrants for Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani, and prosecutors plan to hand those warrants to foreign law enforcement.
Seven of the eight defendants are Indian citizens and lived in India, while the eighth, Cyril Cabanes, is a dual French-Australian citizen who lived in Singapore, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed related civil charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Cabanes, 50, an executive at Azure Power Global. Prosecutors identified Cabanes as one of the Canadian investor’s employees.
Gautam Adani is worth $69.8 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him the world’s 22nd richest person.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Jonathan Oatis)
