Adani Group denied that the chairman of the group, Gautam Adani, and his nephew Sagar Adani had been booked under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in the US. It acknowledged that they had been charged on three counts of (a) alleged securities fraud conspiracy, (b) alleged wire fraud conspiracy and (c) alleged securities fraud, though.
The Group had come under severe criticism over the last week or so for violating SEBI rules and not informing the stock exchange and investors of the ongoing investigation against it in the US.
In a stock exchange filing, Adani Green Energy Ltd, which is at the centre of the bribery allegations, said reports claiming that the three have been charged with FCPA violations “are incorrect”.
They have been charged with offences that are punishable with a monetary fine or penalty. “Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain have not been charged with any violation of the FCPA in the counts set forth in the indictment of the US DOJ or civil complaint of the US SEC.
Meanwhile, in separate letters to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, EAS Sarma, former union power secretary, has urged an inquiry in India into the indictment of Gautam Adani in the United States.
Not only did the bribery scheme alleged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unfold in India, he holds, but the union government and a public sector undertaking under the ministry of renewable energy SECI (Solar Energy Corporation of India) are the co-conspirators. The union government, he says, is actually the ring leader, he has said in multiple interviews during the past few days.
He had earlier written directly to the Prime Minister among others, suggesting that SECI’s power purchase agreement with Adani Green to purchase solar power at exorbitant rates for the next 25 years was designed to fleece Indian energy consumers. He had of course received no reply from anyone.
What the FBI has done in the United States, could and should have been done by the CBI. What the Securities Exchange Commission of the United States did was doable in India itself by SEBI and what a New York court did by issuing summons and a warrant of arrest, should have been done by an Indian court, Sarma points out.
