US court summons to Adani: Centre asks Gujarat court to send it
#News India Bureau March 11,2025
The Union Ministry of Law and Justice has requested a Gujarat court to serve summons to industrialist Gautam Adani in a suit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The move has been taken under the Hague Treaty, which allows cooperation between countries to assist in the service of legal documents for cases filed abroad. The development was confirmed by the central government to The Hindu newspaper.
The Department of Legal Affairs (DLA) of the Law Ministry had sent a summons received from the US last month to the District and Sessions Court of Ahmedabad. The letter was written on February 25, asking to start the process of summoning Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani.
The case was filed by US regulator SEC in conjunction with federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York. Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani have been accused of allegedly concealing “hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes” from US investors while they were executives of Adani Green Ltd. The SEC claims that the bribes were paid to Indian officials to buy power at higher rates, benefiting Adani Green and a solar power plant operator, Azure Power.
According to The Hindu, the SEC had informed a New York court on February 18 that it had sought assistance from the Indian government under the Hague Convention in serving the summons. However, earlier the Law Ministry had claimed in a Right to Information (RTI) reply that it had not received any such request till February 21.
The RTI application was filed on February 19, and the reply was given on March 3, even though the summons had already been sent to the Gujarat court. The mess has raised questions about whether the ministry was aware of the request or not.
This case against the Adani Group has been in the news since last year, when US prosecutors alleged that the group had secured solar power contracts by bribing Indian officials. However, the Adani Group has rejected these allegations as “baseless”. Meanwhile, the Donald Trump administration in the US suspended the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Prevention Act (FCPA) for 180 days on February 10, under which Adani was charged. With this, the group hopes that legal action may be delayed. It was also widely publicised in India that Adani has got relief in the US. But there the case is going on at its own pace and there has been no change in it.
Last year, the Federal Attorney of Brooklyn presented a chargesheet, in which Adani was accused of bribing officials. It was said that this bribe was given to persuade officials to buy electricity produced by Adani Green Energy, a subsidiary of the Adani Group. In this regard, the company has misled American investors. Whereas the company had told investors in writing that it had not given any kind of bribe in this project, nor resorted to any kind of corruption.
According to a Reuters report, the full details of Gautam Adani’s alleged bribery scheme are recorded in a 54-page criminal indictment of federal prosecutors. A large amount of electronic messages were captured between Adani and his seven associates. In early 2020, Solar Energy Corporation of India started giving importance to Adani Green Energy. Solar Energy Corporation also contracted with Azure Power Global for a 12 GW solar power project. Both companies were going to make huge profits in the future by selling electricity.
According to the SEC, Sagar Adani and Azure CEO showed uneasiness over this delay at that time and hinted at giving a bribe. On encrypted messaging application WhatsApp, the Azure CEO wrote on November 24, 2020, that local power companies were being “incentivized,” to which Sagar Adani allegedly replied in February 2021, “Yes… but the optics are very hard to cover.” “As you know, we have doubled the incentives (bribes) to push these approvals through,” Sagar Adani told the Azure CEO.
The SEC did not name the Azure CEO as a defendant, but Azure’s securities filings show that the CEO at the time was Ranjit Gupta. Gupta has been charged by the US Justice Department with conspiring to violate anti-bribery laws. However, Azure had said it was cooperating with the US investigation, and the individuals involved in the allegations had left the company more than a year ago.
In August 2021, Gautam Adani had the first of several meetings with an official from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, whom he allegedly called “a bribery racketeering,” according to a federal court indictment. Adani had promised a bribe of $228 million in exchange for the state agreeing to buy power from the US. By December, Andhra Pradesh agreed to buy power, and other states with smaller contracts soon followed suit, according to the Justice Department’s indictment. Officials in other states were also promised bribes, US officials said.
According to the SEC, during a meeting at a coffee shop on December 6, 2021, Azure executives allegedly discussed “rumors about how Adani had helped get government deals signed”. Gautam Adani said on December 14, 2021, that Adani Green Energy would become “the world’s largest energy company by 2030”. “The sudden good fortune for Azure and Adani Green hit the market,” the SEC wrote in its complaint. The Indian media began singing the praises of the Adani Group’s success. But behind the scenes, alleged bribes were at the root of this success.
The US Justice Department alleges that the SEC sent a “general inquiry” letter to Azure on March 17, 2022. Azure was trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the time. The SEC had asked about its recent contracts. According to the Justice Department, Gautam Adani told Azure representatives during a meeting at its Ahmedabad office the following month i.e. in April that he expected to be reimbursed more than $80 million for the bribes he had paid to officials that ultimately benefited Azure contracts.
