The Andhra Pradesh government on Monday said that it is reviewing its internal files to determine whether cancelling a power supply contract linked to the Adani Group was possible, Reuters reported.

This comes days after a United States court indicted industrialist Gautam Adani, the chairperson of the Adani Group, in a $265 million bribery and fraud case.

On November 20, the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission also claimed that the previous YSR Congress government in Andhra Pradesh was paid or promised a bribe of nearly $200 million, or Rs 1,750 crore, by Adani and his nephew, Sagar Adani, in exchange for power supply agreements.

On Monday, state Finance Minister Payyavula Keshav told Reuters that the Telugu Desam Party government was “digging into all the internal files” from the previous administration under which the alleged misconduct took place.

“We will also examine what can be done next, like is there a possibility to cancel the contract,” the news agency quoted Keshav as saying. “State government is looking into this issue closely.”

The US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District in New York on November 20 claimed that Gautam Adani and seven others, including Sagar Adani, agreed to pay over $265 million, or nearly Rs 2,236 crore, in bribes to Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024 to obtain contracts expected to yield a profit of $2 billion, or nearly Rs 16,880 crore, over 20 years.

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Gautam Adani met former Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in August 2021 to discuss the state not having entered into a power supply agreement with Solar Energy Corporation of India and asked about the “incentives” that would push the government to do so.

The commission said that Sagar Adani also met Reddy on September 12, 2021. An Adani Group company, Adani Green, along with another company named Azure Power, stood to benefit from such an agreement, according to the regulatory body.

It alleged that after Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani paid or promised Andhra Pradesh officials the bribe, the state government agreed in principle to sign a power supply agreement with the Solar Energy Corporation of India.

In its complaint, the Securities and Exchange Commission claimed that the “Adanis [Gautam and Sagar] paid or promised a bribe to AP 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”.

After the allegations came to light, the YSR Congress Party, which Reddy heads, said that there had been no direct agreement between power distribution companies in Andhra Pradesh and the Adani Group. It said that the allegations made against the state government of the time were incorrect.

A judge has issued arrest warrants for the industrialist and Sagar Adani in connection with the allegations. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has also summoned Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani in connection with the allegations.

The Adani Group has denied the accusations, calling them “baseless”.

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