Sagar Adani’s ‘bribe notes’ reveal per-megawatt payoffs to secure power contracts in India

A US indictment of top executives of India's Adani Group has put a spotlight on Sagar Adani, a millennial scion of the company who kept track of hundreds of millions of dollars of alleged bribes to Indian officials on his mobile phone, court filings show. US prosecutors called the notes on Adani’s phone 'bribe notes.'

In those notes, Sagar Adani, nephew of the Indian conglomerate's billionaire founder Gautam Adani, noted 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. He even identified a per megawatt bribe rate to secure the power contracts, the court filings show.

In discussing how the bribery scheme was moving along in 2020, Sagar Adani remarked in a WhatsApp message: “Yup…but the optics are very difficult to cover.”

Those optics became impossible to cover on Wednesday when 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 expected to yield $2 billion in profit over 20 years. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a parallel civil case.

Sagar Adani and Gautam Adani did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. In a statement, Adani Group said the allegations made by US authorities in criminal and civil cases were "baseless and denied," adding that it would seek "all possible legal recourse."

Sagar Adani, 30, was educated at Brown University, an Ivy League college, and joined the Adani Group in 2015. He is credited with building the entire solar and wind portfolio of Adani Green Energy. He currently oversees "all strategic and financial matters of Adani Green Energy," its website says.

The crisis is the second in two years to hit the ports-to-power conglomerate founded by Gautam Adani, 62, who Forbes magazine says is the world’s 25th richest man. The fallout was felt immediately, as billions of dollars were wiped off the market value of Adani Group companies and Kenya's president cancelled a massive airport project with the group.

‘Bribe notes’
At the center of prosecutors' investigation were Sagar Adani’s 'bribe notes,' the court filings show, in which he kept track of the payments to secure power deals. In his notes, Sagar Adani was detailed, sometimes calculating the bribe’s value down to the per megawatt rate. He also sought to be discreet, alluding to the government officials who had taken the money with their abbreviated titles.

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.”

In another example laid out in the filings, Sagar Adani offered a bribe in July 2021 worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to government officials in the Indian state of Odisha in exchange for the state agreeing to purchase 500 megawatts of power.

Just one month later, in a series of meetings, the filings allege 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.

The bribe payment was worth approximately $200 million, the court filings say. Sagar Adani was also instrumental, the court filings show, in recouping some of the bribe money he paid out from others involved in the scheme.

Between April and June 2022, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani, along with other company executives, met in person in India multiple times with the chairman of a power company called Azure and other officials.

The discussion included how Gautam Adani, with Sagar Adani’s assistance, “had promised or paid bribes to state government officials" in India to procure contracts, the filings said.

US prosecutors said the Adanis repeatedly sought to collect from Azure its agreed-upon share of those bribes.

Azure did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Azure said it was aware of regulatory actions against former directors and officers who it said had not been associated with Azure for more than a year. Azure said the company "has cooperated with those agencies and it will continue to do so."