New Orleans       Gautam Adani is one of the richest men in the world.  He’s not Elon Musk, but he’s in the neighborhood with a net worth of about $85 billion.  His companies in India are octopus-like with tentacles in many critical areas.  Coal is still a huge energy source in India, and his operations supply much of it.  His close relationship to his Gujarati colleague, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, and formerly the big man in their home state, has often been reported as a key to his success in recent years.

ACORN follows him not because we care about the lives of the rich and famous, but because his companies, controversially, with the national government’s fingers on the scale, ended up with the huge redevelopment contract for Dharavi, the megaslum in central Mumbai, where we have worked for almost 20 years.  We continue to oppose the plan, even as it moves closer to full implementation.  Our main objective in Dharavi has been to win more rights to return for Dharavi residents and establish their residency to qualify.  Coming elections in Mumbai may give us more friends in local government to join our members in fighting for their homes and livelihoods.

Adani and his companies are in the international news now.  It’s not the first time.  He was targeted by a Wall Street research firm a couple of years ago that accused them of inflating their numbers in the way they handled transfers between the companies.  Those revelations from short sellers lopped a bunch of value from the Adani Group and his personal fortune.  The current news flashes are not about some speculators’ research and dreams, but much, much more serious.  We’re talking bribery now and deep legal accusations in United States courts brought by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Here’s the case in a nutshell as reported by the Times, the Journal, and Bloomberg.  DOJ has accused Adani and his son of orchestrating a $250 million bribery plot.  They won a huge solar development contract in India, but it didn’t come with any commitments to actually buy the power being generated.  The price was set too high, so they had problem selling it to the various India states.  They tried to “fix” the problem by offering “incentive” payments to the states to buy their solar as part of the energy mix.  Even though they recorded the payments on their books, it went into officials’ personal accounts, which makes it more than an incentive and clarifies the payments as bribes.  The government has a lot of information about how they tried to conceal the payments.

The Adanis are being accused of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but you might wonder why this isn’t an Indian problem, as opposed to a US prosecution.  Parts of the Adani operation were listed from time to time on the New York Stock Exchange, and they sold a pile of this mess to US investors, under these sketchy premises.  All of which puts them in hot water.

The whole problem of this kind of crony capitalism, India-style, is that this would never be something that the Indian government would likely bring before it’s slow moving justice system.  Quite the opposite.  The Modi government recently stated that it was going to remove the registration from any nonprofit that opposed development of any kind.  Modi has claimed, as he did earlier in defending Adani from the short sellers, that anything that is not part of the cheering squad for Indian business is anti-India and unpatriotic.  Adani and his companies will get their day in court, but in Dharavi this may also force a deeper look at the redevelopment as well.