Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday told his Parliament that he has ordered the cancellation of a procurement process that would have given control of the country’s primary airport to the Adani Group, reported Reuters.

This came after the indictment of billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani in the United States in a multibillion-dollar bribery and fraud scheme related to the conglomerate’s solar projects in India.

Ruto said that he has also directed the scrapping of a 30-year, $736-million public-private partnership agreement signed last month by the Kenyan energy ministry with an Adani Group company to construct power transmission lines.

“I have directed agencies within the Ministry of Transport and within the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to immediately cancel the ongoing procurement,” Ruto said in his State of the Nation address. He attributed his decision to the “new information provided by investigative agencies and partner nations”.

Kenya’s Energy Minister Opiyo Wandayi, however, said that there was no bribery or corruption involved in awarding the transmission lines contract to the Indian conglomerate, reported Reuters.

Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and six others were indicted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District in New York for allegedly agreeing to pay over $265 million, or nearly Rs 2,236 crore, in bribes to Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024 to obtain contracts for Adani Green Energy.

The contracts were expected to yield a profit of $2 billion, or nearly Rs 16,880 crore, over 20 years.

“The allegations made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against directors of Adani Green are baseless and denied,” the Adani Group said in a statement on Thursday.

The indictment has triggered uproar in India, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is also the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, demanding Gautam Adani’s arrest.

In the wake of the indictment, shares of Adani Group companies suffered losses of up to 20% on Thursday as markets opened.

Also read: