Three former employees of pension giant Caisse de d\u00e9p\u00f4t et placement du Qu\u00e9bec (CDPQ) have been charged by U.S. authorities for their alleged role in covering up what the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) alleges was a massive bribery scheme involving Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and Indian government officials.<\/p>\n
A criminal indictment filed in a New York federal court charged Gautam Adani, his nephew, Sagar Adani, and Vneet Jaain with securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud in connection with an alleged scheme to bribe government officials in India to secure government contracts for an Indian energy company, Adani Green Energy Ltd., and another firm, Azure Power Global Limited.<\/p>\n
The indictment alleged that, between 2020 and 2024, the defendants agreed to pay more than US$250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain government contracts that were projected to generate US$2 billion in after-tax profits for the company over 20 years.<\/p>\n
It also alleged that they concealed the scheme when they sought to raise capital from investors in the form of syndicated loans that raised more than US$2 billion and bond offerings that raised another US$1 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis indictment alleges schemes to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice,\u201d said Lisa Miller, deputy assistant attorney general in the Eastern District of New York, in a release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese offenses were allegedly committed by senior executives and directors to obtain and finance massive state energy supply contracts through corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”<\/p>\n
The Adanis were also charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a parallel civil fraud action. The SEC is seeking monetary penalties, officer and director bans and permanent injunctions in that case.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs alleged, Gautam and Sagar Adani induced U.S. investors to buy Adani Green bonds through an offering process that misrepresented not only that Adani Green had a robust anti-bribery compliance program but also that the company\u2019s senior management had not and would not pay or promise to pay bribes,\u201d said Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC\u2019s division of enforcement, in a release.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Adani Group called the U.S. allegations “baseless” and said, “All possible legal recourse will be sought.”<\/p>\n
Additionally, three former CDPQ employees were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for allegedly deleting emails and other electronic materials documenting the scheme, amid investigations by the SEC, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and a U.S. grand jury.<\/p>\n
None of the allegations have been proven, and the defendants are presumed to be innocent of the criminal charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Charges involve alleged bribes paid for government contracts in India<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147314,"featured_media":393467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2312,2324],"tags":[2443,2355,2370,2858],"yst_prominent_words":[1695,6729,8419,13009,13428,20463,31026,58353],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497289"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497313,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497289\/revisions\/497313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497289"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=497289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}