Gautam, Sagar Adani And Vneet Jaain Not Charged With FCPA Violation In DoJ Indictment

Adani Group founder Gautam Adani, Adani Green Energy Ltd. Executive Director Sagar Adani, and Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Vneet Jaain have not been named in the bribery charges in the indictment filed by the US Department of Justice, a statement by Adani Green read on Wednesday.

The company has further refuted news reports that said that Adani officials have been charged with bribery charges under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The DoJ indictment, offers no evidence that bribes were paid by Adani executives to Indian government officials, the indictment and the complaint solely rest on claims that bribes were promised or discussed, the company stated.

Only senior officials of Azure Power Global Ltd. and Canadian institutional investor CDPQ have been named in the bribery charges under the US FCPA provisions, Adani Green Energy cited the latest filing from the US Department of Justice. The said officials conspired to obstruct the US government's investigations into the bribery scheme, charged the Department of Justice, claimed the indictment.

Adani Group termed the US Justice Department and SEC allegations as "baseless", and said it will pursue all possible legal recourse to challenge the charges.

“All of this is based on likelihoods and hearsay from former employees of Azure Power and CDPQ places the US DoJ's and US SEC's action against Adani on dangerously shaky ground – both morally and legally,” Adani Green said.

The ports-to-power conglomerate has been expanding operations across the globe, in direct competition with US and Chinese entities, it further said.

Charges With Lesser Impact, Say Lawyers

"To my mind, if it is only these three charges, which are security fraud, conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, and securities fraud all three are allegations, the impact of that is much much lesser than the impact of FCPA. So from the legal perspective these three charges have lesser impact than the charges of FCPA," said Sanjay Asher, a senior partner to Crawford Bayley.

"It also means that Adani group members... are not involved in any foreign corrupt practices therefore this is good news for the Adani group and obviously other charges have to be proved too because they are simply allegations and Adani group has certainly said that they are not involved and these are wrongly applied to them so I think the matter should not be more clear now," said HP Ranina, lawyer, Supreme Court.

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