Billionaire Indian Gautam Adani will pay several million dollars in fines in the United States. He was indicted in a large corruption case. However, his group insists that he does not admit his guilt on Friday.
The indictment of November 20, 2024 in New York accused the mogul and several of his subordinates of deliberately misleading international investors. The case involves a multimillion-dollar corruption system. The 63-year-old industrialist was suspected of participating in the payment of $250 million (about 215 million euros) in bribes to Indian officials to obtain solar energy contracts in India, to the detriment of US investors.
Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani have agreed to pay a fine of $18 million (about 15.5 million euros). They specify that they do so “without admitting or denying the allegations made in the civil complaint,” according to a letter from Adani Green Energy to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
The payment of this penalty comes as the US federal prosecutor’s office is said to be preparing to drop charges against Gautam Adani, as reported by the New York Times on Thursday. In the letter, Gautam Adani emphasizes that “no charges have been brought against his company, which is not involved in this procedure.”
The New York Times reports that the decision to drop the charges, filed in November 2024, came after Gautam Adani recruited a new team of defense attorneys. This team is led by Robert Giuffra, one of the lawyers for US President Donald Trump.
During a meeting between the defense and the prosecutor at the Department of Justice in April, the lawyer highlighted a form of deal: if the charges against him are dropped, Gautam Adani would be prepared to invest $10 billion (about 8.5 billion euros) in the US economy and create 15,000 jobs.
At the head of a business empire ranging from coal to airports, cement, and media, the president of the Adani group is considered a close associate of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to Forbes’ index, he is currently the 24th richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $82 billion (about 70 billion euros). He has always dismissed the allegations of the US justice system as “baseless.”
