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Indian billionaire Gautam Adani charged in US over alleged $250mn bribery scheme

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Indian billionaire Gautam Adani charged in US over alleged 0mn bribery scheme

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Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has been charged by federal prosecutors in New York in connection with an alleged years-long scheme to bribe Indian officials in exchange for favourable terms on solar power contracts projected to bring in more than $2bn in profit.

The 62-year-old tycoon, who chairs the multinational conglomerate Adani Group and has been a vocal supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was indicted in Brooklyn on charges including securities fraud alongside seven others, including executives of Adani energy subsidiaries and former employees of a Canadian pension fund.

His nephew Sagar Adani, who is the executive director at a renewables company founded by Gautam Adani, is also among the defendants.

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US prosecutors said more than $250mn in bribes were paid between 2020 and 2024 to people in the Indian government as part of the scheme, which was allegedly concealed from the US banks and investors from which they raised billions of dollars.

They claimed that Gautam Adani met with an Indian official to “advance” the scheme.

The US attorney’s office in Brooklyn also charged three former employees of large Canadian pension fund CDPQ in connection with the alleged scheme, saying they obstructed an investigation into the bribes by deleting emails and agreeing to provide false information to the US government. CDPQ, which invests in infrastructure projects, is a shareholder in Adani companies.

The indictments threaten to reignite a reputational crisis for Adani Group, which has been trying to move past claims of accounting fraud and stock market manipulation made last year by US short seller Hindenburg Research.

“This indictment alleges schemes to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials,” US deputy assistant attorney-general Lisa Miller said. “These offences 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 US investors.”

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Prosecutors further alleged that the defendants “extensively documented their corrupt efforts” on mobile phones, on PowerPoint presentations and in Excel spreadsheets “that summarised various options for paying and concealing bribe payments”.

In a parallel civil lawsuit, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said the alleged bribes were paid in order to “secure [the Indian government’s] commitment to purchase energy at above-market rates that would benefit Adani Green and Azure Power”, two renewable energy companies in India.

Adani Green, which is building one of the largest solar plants in the world at Khavda in India’s western state of Gujarat, raised more than $175mn from US investors as part of a $750mn corporate bond while the scheme was ongoing, US regulators said.

Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani allegedly “induced US investors to buy Adani Green bonds through an offering process that misrepresented not only that Adani Green had a robust anti-bribery compliance programme but also that the company’s senior management had not and would not pay or promise to pay bribes”, said Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director at the SEC’s enforcement division. 

According to the regulator’s complaint, Sagar Adani allegedly told Azure executives and others about “incentives”, or bribes, he had been proposing to “motivate” state officials to agree contracts with the Indian government’s arm responsible for implementing renewable energy programmes.

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Adani and Azure did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, CDPQ said: “CDPQ is aware of charges filed in the US against certain former employees. Those employees were all terminated in 2023 and CDPQ is co-operating with US authorities. In light of the pending cases, we have no further comment at this time.”

The Indian group’s founder has over the past two decades built Adani into one of India’s most formidable industrial groups, diversifying from its core ports and trading business into mining, airports, coal and renewable power.

Outside India it has built or bid for power, port and other infrastructure projects in several countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Israel, where it operates the port of Haifa.

In a post on X congratulating Donald Trump on his US election victory earlier this month, Adani said his group was “committed to leveraging its global expertise” and would invest $10bn in American energy security and infrastructure projects as part of the partnership between India and the US, with the aim of creating up to 15,000 jobs.

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Adani’s rise in business, first in Gujarat then nationally, has coincided with the Indian state’s drive to harness private-sector expertise and capital to develop neglected transport and other infrastructure, which has accelerated during Modi’s decade in power.

As shares of his listed companies rose, in 2022 Adani briefly overtook rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani to become Asia’s richest man. 

The Indian National Congress party’s Rahul Gandhi, who became India’s opposition leader after this year’s general election, called for an investigation after the Hindenburg allegations and questioned Adani’s record of winning government tenders, as well as his close ties with ruling politicians including Modi, who is also from Gujarat.

The Adani Group dismissed the Hindenburg report as an “attack on India” and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His companies’ share prices have since rebounded.

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Co-leader of Germany’s far-right AfD calls for mass deportations

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Co-leader of Germany’s far-right AfD calls for mass deportations

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The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany has called for mass deportations of immigrants as the party launched its programme for next month’s nationwide elections.

In a fiery speech to supporters in the small town of Riesa in Saxony, east Germany, Alice Weidel said that under the AfD — which is second in the polls with a record vote share of around 20 per cent — Germany would witness “repatriations on a large scale”.

Weidel, AfD’s candidate for chancellor in the elections, used the controversial term “remigration” to describe the policy.

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The word was coined by right-wing Austrian ideologue Martin Sellner, who defines “remigration” as forcibly removing immigrants who break the law or “refuse to integrate”, regardless of their citizenship status — an idea that critics say is akin to ethnic cleansing.

On Saturday Weidel said: “I have to tell you quite honestly: if it’s called remigration, then it’s called remigration.”

She was met with loud applause from party delegates who also repeatedly shouted “Alice für Deutschland” — a play on the forbidden Nazi-era slogan “Alles für Deutschland”, meaning “everything for Germany”.

Weidel, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, has positioned herself as the more presentable face of a party that includes ultraradicals who have been classified as right-wing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

Earlier this week in a joint appearance on X with Elon Musk, Weidel used the unprecedented public platform to argue that the AfD — which also promotes normalisation of relations with Moscow and the tearing down of wind turbines — had become a mainstream political force.

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However, it has little chance of coming to power in the upcoming elections because all of Germany’s other major parties have ruled out going into coalition with it.

Weidel’s embrace of remigration was seen by some in the party as a nod to Björn Höcke, the flag-bearer of the radical right who led AfD to a historic first-place finish in regional elections in the east German state of Thuringia in September.

“It is a concession to Björn Höcke,” said Kay Gottschalk, a member of the German Bundestag who belongs to the more moderate flank of the party. “It is a word, of course. I would express it in another way — sending them back — but that is what delegates want.”

Weidel also used her speech to repeat her call for the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany to be brought back into operation, to bring back nuclear power and to rail against gender studies programmes.

The party gathering was met with large-scale protests. Around 10,000 anti-AfD demonstrators turned up and police put Riesa, a town of 30,000 people, under lockdown, delaying the start of the conference by two hours.

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The architecturally significant houses destroyed in L.A.'s fires

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The architecturally significant houses destroyed in L.A.'s fires

Los Angeles has Frank Gehry’s glorious Walt Disney Concert Hall, the space-age wonder of the LAX Theme Building and the stack-of-vinyl needle drop that is the Capitol Records building. For some design geeks, however, the heart and soul of L.A.’s architecture resides not just in its museums and office towers but also in its exalted, often otherworldly houses.

Those homes — especially those designed by Midcentury greats such as John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Ray Kappe, and Charles and Ray Eames — have been the obsession of those tracking the threats posed by firestorms laying waste to the wooded canyons and grassy hillsides that are the scenic backdrops for these residences.

Beloved landmarks by Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler and others stand outside of the immediate fire threat, but other notable houses have not been so lucky. Here’s a partial accounting of the confirmed losses:

Zane Grey Estate, Altadena: This home, with elements of Spanish, Mission and Mediterranean Revival design on 1.2 acres west of Lake Avenue, was built by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey in 1907 for Chicago business machine manufacturer Arthur Herbert Woodward. At the time of its construction, it was called the first fire-proof structure in Altadena because it was built of reinforced concrete. (Woodward’s wife had lived through the devastating 1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago, which erupted during a performance, killing more than 600.) The author Zane Grey bought the home in 1920, and he and his wife built a 3,500-square floor addition, including a library and office where Grey used to write. The 7,240-square-foot home was put on the market for about $4 million in 2020 and was listed as having eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, a commercial kitchen with a 15-foot ceiling, as well as a main kitchen, wine cellar and massive basement. Original cast-iron sconces, iron handrails and chandeliers remained in the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Andrew McNally House: Architect Frederick L. Roehrig built this Queen Anne-style mansion for Rand McNally Publishing Co-founder and President Andrew McNally in 1887. McNally paid Roehrig $15,000 to design the mansion at East Mariposa Street and Santa Rosa Avenue, in an area that would soon be called Millionaire’s Row. The home had a three-story rotunda with views of the San Gabriel Mountains, and McNally kept a private railway car there. He had a gardener who nurtured the deodar cedars along a part of Santa Rosa that became known as Christmas Tree Lane.

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The Keeler House: In 1990 modernist architect Ray Kappe remodeled a home for jazz singer Anne Keeler and her then-husband, Gordon Melcher. The 4,142-square-foot cantilevered post-and-beam structure, nestled in a woodsy hillside with canyon and coastline views, went on the market for $12 million in April. With four bedrooms and three bathrooms, the house had walls and floors of concrete complemented by a palette of redwood, teak, fir and glass block. Kappe founded the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972 and died in 2019 at age 92.

Janes Village: This cluster of historic English cottages was built between 1924 and 1926 by architect Elisha P. Janes (known professionally as E.P. Janes). Janes built at least 270 English- and Spanish-style cottages in the area. These were mostly single-story stucco-finished homes with six rooms, arranged in one of four floor plans and priced to be accessible to the middle class.

Gregory Ain’s Park Planned homes: Designed in 1948 by Ain with the help of the era’s premier modernist landscape architect, Garrett Eckbo, this strip of 28 Midcentury Modern homes was built as part of a social experiment conceived by a modernist architect focused on cost-effective, prefabricated design for working people. The area was created to look like a park with no front fences and continuous landscaping. The homes had side-facing garages and interior courtyards and glass walls, making them feel a bit like mini estates.

Bridges House: Anyone who has driven down Sunset Boulevard toward the coast will remember the Brutalist Bridges House, by architect Robert Bridges. After working on homes including his own, Bridges became a professor of real estate finance at the USC Marshall School of Business, where he is professor emeritus. His striking home was perched above the boulevard, its wood and glass cantilevered over a concrete base.

Will Rogers’ home: The actor’s ranch house, part of Will Rogers State Historic Park, was destroyed in the Palisades fire. In the 1920s Rogers built a 31-room residence with 11 bathrooms, a guesthouse, a golf course, stables and a corral on about 360 acres. In 1944 the compound and grounds became a park and museum after his widow, Betty, donated them to the state. “The Rogers family is devastated by the loss of the California ranch and the overwhelming loss of the community,” Jennifer Rogers-Etcheverry, the actor’s great-granddaughter, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to all those neighbors who have lost their homes.”

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Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says

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Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of “a coordinated, military-style attack” by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report released Friday.

The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed.

“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings and locked the survivors in internment camps.”

No one today could be held criminally responsible, she said, “but the historical reckoning for the massacre continues.”

The report’s legal findings noted that if contemporary civil rights laws were in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against both public officials and private citizens.

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Though considered one of the worst episodes of racial terror in U.S. history, the massacre was relatively unknown for decades: City officials buried the story, and few survivors talked about the massacre.

The Justice Department began its investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the agency to examine such crimes resulting in death that occurred before 1980. Investigators spoke with survivors and their descendants, looked at firsthand accounts and examined an informal review by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the F.B.I. In that 1921 report, the agency asserted that the riot was not the result of “racial feeling,” and suggested that Black men were responsible for the massacre.

The new 123-page report corrects the record, while detailing the scale of destruction and its aftermath. The massacre began with an unfounded accusation. A young Black man, Dick Rowland, was being held in custody by local authorities after being accused of assaulting a young white woman.

According to the report, after a local newspaper sensationalized the story, an angry crowd gathered at the courthouse demanding that Mr. Rowland be lynched. The local sheriff asked Black men from Greenwood, including some who had recently returned from military service, to come to the courthouse to try to prevent the lynching. Other reports suggest the Black neighbors offered to help but were turned away by the sheriff.

The white mob viewed attempts to protect Mr. Rowland as “an unacceptable challenge to the social order,” the report said. The crowd grew and soon there was a confrontation. Hundreds of residents (some of whom had been drinking) were deputized by the Tulsa Police. Law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies who, along with other residents, eventually descended on Greenwood, a neighborhood whose success inspired the name Black Wall Street.

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The report described the initial attack as “opportunistic,” but by daybreak on June 1, “a whistle blew, and the violence and arsons that had been chaotic became systematic.” According to the report, up to 10,000 white Tulsans participated in the attack, burning or looting 35 city blocks. It was so “systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence,” the report said.

In the aftermath, the survivors were left to rebuild their lives with little or no help from the city. The massacre’s impact, historians say, is still felt generations later.

In the years since the attack, survivors and their descendants and community activists have fought for justice. Most recently, a lawsuit seeking reparations filed on behalf of the last two known centenarian survivors was dismissed by Oklahoma justices in June. In recent years, Tulsa has excavated sections of a city cemetery in search of the graves of massacre victims. And in 2024, the city created a commission to study the harms of the atrocity and recommend solutions. The results are expected in the coming weeks.

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