White House: Aware of (Adani) allegations, India-US ties on strong foundation

United States prosecutors indicted the Adani Group Chairman, Gautam S Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and six others on Wednesday for allegedly offering `2,029 crore bribes to Indian government officials for securing “lucrative solar energy supply contracts” with state electricity distribution companies.

“Obviously we’re aware of these allegations, and I would have to refer you to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and DOJ (Department of Justice) about the specifics of those allegations against the Adani Group,” she said.

“What I will say is on the US and India relationship, we believe that it stands on an extremely strong foundation anchored in ties between our people and cooperation across a full range of global issues,” Jean-Pierre said.

“What we believe and we’re confident about is that we’ll continue to navigate this issue as we have with other issues that may have come up as you just stated. And so the specifics of this, this is something that the SEC and DOJ can speak to directly, but again, we believe that… this relationship between India and the US has been built on a strong foundation,” the White House Press Secretary said.

The bribery charges come nearly 22 months after the Adani Group faced allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud from US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research.

The government has not responded to the allegations that the Adani Group has denied.

There is a sense in the establishment that the controversy will not impact the Indo-US relations, which are considered to be bipartisan, in the last two decades.

Diplomats dealing with the US account feel that the institutional mechanisms between the two countries are quite robust — that such episodes do not usually impinge on diplomatic relations.

While Adani’s global footprint — from Australia to Bangladesh, Kenya to Sri Lanka — has expanded in the last decade, the Modi government has backed the business group with some diplomatic muscle.

New Delhi usually refrains from wading into allegations against private business groups, and portrays an “at arm’s length” distance between the government and the firms.

When the Bangladesh interim government, under Chief Advisor Mohammad Yunus, criticised the Adani Group on the power purchase agreement, the Indian government did not wade into the dispute and asked the two parties to resolve the issue.

At present, the US has a lame-duck administration under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the Presidential polls to former President Donald Trump.