ECONOMYNEXT – Indiaâ€s Adani group has been charged by US prosecutors alleging a plan to pay 250 million dollars in bribes to get solar energy contracts, and misleading investors when capital was raised from American investors, media reports said.
Chairman Gautam Adani, two executives of Adani Green Energy Limited, his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain are charged with misleading U S and international investors about their companyâ€s compliance with antibribery and anticorruption practices, CNBC, a US business news channel reported.
Sri Lankan activists have also taken a project by Adani Green Energy in Mannar in the Northeast to court, after it won a wind power deal from the islandâ€s government without competitive tender at allegedly far higher prices than other projects with competitive tender.
In Sri Lanka and many other countries renewable energy projects for decades have evaded competitive tendering through so-called ‘feed in tariffs†which critics say are manipulated claiming various costs.
The US case relates to solar energy deals from the Indian government.
The indictment in the US District Court in Brooklyn also charged Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal, former executives Azure Power Global, a renewable energy firm.
Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra, three former employees of the Canadian institutional investor were also charged.
The indictment alleges that Adani group sought to “obtain and finance massive state energy supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors,†Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lisa Miller was quoted as saying by PBS, a public broadcasting service.
