The Adani Group has found itself in the middle of another maelstrom after the United States Justice Department and the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a criminal indictment against Gautam Adani and his other company associates.
NDTV Shares Tumble
As a result of this development, many of the conglomerates shares started the day's trade on Thursday with deep cuts.
One of the group's most recent acquisitions, NDTV, also saw its shares listed on the National Stock Exchange crumble in the very first few minutes of the intraday trade.
The market opened for trade after a gap of a day on Thursday, November 21. The start could have been better, as the indices started the day's trade in red.
The shares of NDTV, which had closed at Rs 168.79 per share, opened for the new day's trade at Rs 149 per share.
At the time of writing, the company shares declined 9.44 per cent or Rs 15.94. This took the overall share of the company to Rs 152.85.
US Indicts Gautam Adani
Hindenburg Research, the US-based short-selling group, was the first to break this report through their social media channels. In their post on X, the research group said, "BREAKING: Gautam Adani and 7 other executives criminally indicted in the U.S. over USD 250 million in alleged bribes. The SEC has filed parallel charges in the āmassive bribery schemeā.
As per the US Justice Department, Gautam Adani was involved in a bribery scheme involving USD 250 million or about Rs 2,100 crore.
In the statement, the department said, "A five-count criminal indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, executives of an Indian renewable-energy company (the Indian Energy Company), with conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements."
The defendants named in the document include GAUTAM S. ADANI, SAGAR S. ADANI, VINEET S. JAIN, RANJIT GUPTA, CYRIL CABANES, SAURABH AGARWAL, DEEPAK MALHOTRA, and RUPESH AGARWAL.
