“Foreign Official #1” is how the indictment document by the United States identifies a high-ranking official in Andhra Pradesh whom Gautam Adani is claimed to have met personally in August 2021 to allegedly offer bribes to get solar contracts.
The indictment document does not reveal the official’s name.
But a complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in November, of which Scroll and The News Minute have a copy, states that the official was the “Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh”, who at the time was YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. He leads the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party.
The complaint, which was seeking a jury trial in the case, alleged: “In August 2021, Gautam Adani met personally with the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh about the fact that Andhra Pradesh had not entered into a Power Supply Agreement with SECI and the ‘incentives’ needed to cause Andhra Pradesh to do so.”
The SECI or Solar Energy Corporation of India is a central government firm that had awarded tenders to the Adani Group and Azure Power in 2019 and 2020 to supply 12 gigawatts of solar-generated electricity at a specified price. The SECI, in turn, needed to find state power companies that would be willing to buy the electricity at that price. According to US investigators, after SECI was unable to find buyers for the power because of high prices, Adani and Azure had conspired to offer bribes to state officials.
Referring to the August 2021 meeting, the complaint by the US Securities and Exchange Commission notes: “At this meeting or in connection with that meeting, Gautam Adani paid or promised a bribe to Andhra Pradesh government officials to cause the relevant Andhra Pradesh government entities to enter into Power Supply Agreements with SECI for the purchase of 7,000 MW of power capacity.”
Shortly after the meeting, Andhra Pradesh agreed to purchase seven gigawatts of power from the Solar Energy Corporation of India, which then went on to sign a power purchase agreement with Adani Green and another firm, Azure Power, it alleged.
The complaint added that “communications internal to Adani Green and Azure reflected that Andhra Pradesh had agreed to buy power from SECI”.
The complaint alleged: “In other words, the bribes paid or promised worked.”
In a statement on Thursday, Adani denied the allegations contained in the indictment, dismissing them as “baseless”. It asserted that it was a “law-abiding organisation, fully compliant with all laws”.
Later, Reddy’s party, the YSR Congress, issued a statement saying that “the allegations made on the State Government in the light of the indictment are incorrect”. It said that there was “no direct agreement” between Andhra Pradesh power distribution companies “and any other entities including those belonging to the Adani group”.
According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the bribe allegedly offered was Rs 25 lakh per megawatt – which comes to a total of Rs 1,750 crores.
“Later statements by Adani Green executives to executives of Azure… indicated that the Andhra Pradesh bribe payment was approximately $200 million,” the complaint states. “This was also consistent with Adani Green’s internal records.”
Jagan Mohan Reddy’s office was asked for a comment. The office first said that Reddy had not been named in the indictment, but when it was pointed out that a former chief minister is mentioned in the complaint, the office said they would get back with a response.
YSR Congress later released a statement in which it said: “There is no direct agreement between AP DISCOMs [Andhra Pradesh power distribution companies] and any other entities including those belonging to the Adani group. Therefore, the allegations made on the State Government, in the light of the indictment are incorrect.”
This article is part of a collaborative series reporting on the US charges against Adani.
