New York: The recent indictment of top executives of Adani Group, including its chairperson Gautam Adani, in the US has turned the spotlight on Sagar Adani, a millennial scion of the company.
According to reports, the court fillings indicate that Sagar kept track of hundreds of millions of dollars of alleged bribes to Indian officials on his mobile phone. US prosecutors called the notes on Sagar Adani’s phone as ‘bribe notes,’ claimed a Reuters report.
‘The optics are very difficult to cover…”—Sagar Adani’s ‘encrypted message’
In such notes, Sagar—nephew of the conglomerate’s billionaire founder Gautam Adani—recorded the amount of the bribe he offered, which government official had been offered the money and how much solar power the official’s region would buy in return, the Reuters reported.
It had been alleged that Sagar even identified a per megawatt bribe rate to secure the power contracts. In one of his ‘encrypted’ messages on WhatsApp, Sagar discussed how the bribery scheme was moving along in 2020. “Yup…but the optics are very difficult to cover,” he had remarked in the message.
In such messages, Sagar Adani also sought to be discreet, alluding to the government officials who had taken the money with their abbreviated titles, Reuters reported.
‘In July 2021 hundreds of thousands of dollars offered to govt officials in Odisha…’
According to the court filings—accessed by Reuters—one WhatsApp message dated February 25, 2021, dealt with the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir as well as Chhattisgarh as potential purchasers of green power.
Sagar Adani wrote: “Just so you know, we have doubled the incentives to push for these acceptances.”
He allegedly offered a bribe in July 2021 worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to government officials in Odisha in exchange for the state agreeing to purchase 500 megawatts of power, Reuters claimed.
Just one month later, the filings alleged that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani offered a bribe to Andhra Pradesh government officials, including the chief minister, in exchange for a power deal of 7,000 MW.
Who is Sagar Adani?
Sagar Adani, 30, was educated at Brown University, an Ivy League college. He joined the Adani Group in 2015. He is credited to have built the entire solar and wind portfolio of Adani Green Energy. He currently oversees ‘all strategic and financial matters of Adani Green Energy,’ according to the company’s website.
Sagar Adani, his uncle Gautam, one of the world’s richest men, and six others were indicted for fraud by US prosecutors over their alleged roles in a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian officials to secure power-supply deals. These contracts were expected to yield $2 billion in profit over 20 years. The Adani Group has declined all such allegations.
How will the indictment affect Indian banks?
According to JP Morgan, Indian banks’ loan exposure to the embattled Adani Group seems ‘manageable.’ The firm claimed that any credit risk in the aftermath of Gautam Adani’s indictment in the United States looks ‘contained.’
Shares of Indian state-owned banks fell 2.7% on Thursday over worries about the extent of their exposure to the ports-to-power conglomerate, which has at least 10 listed companies.
Indian banks’ exposure to the group was around 0.3% of outstanding loans as of March, claimed the JP Morgan analysts. The loans were also backed by asset cover.
