Gautam Adani is widely regarded as one of the most powerful men in India, as well as one of the wealthiest. Born in the western state of Gujarat, one of eight children whose father was a low level textile trader, Adani is seen as a self-made industrialist. At its peak in 2022, Adani’s personal net worth touched $127bn (£100bn).
His first venture into business was trading in the diamond industry in Mumbai, where he made hist first million rupees. In the 1980s, he returned to Gujarat to help with his brother’s plastic business and gradually widened to importing metals, agricultural materials and textiles.
By the 1990s, Adani had acquired control of a lucrative port in Gujarat, laying the groundwork for his conglomerate, the Adani Group, to become India’s largest private operator of ports. His empire then expanded into energy, building coal-fired power stations, importing foreign coal and opening coalmines in India. His network of coal-fired power stations grew to such a scale he became India’s largest private producer of thermal power.
The relationship between Adani and Narendra Modi, who has been India’s prime minister since 2014, began in the early 2000s in Gujarat. Modi was then the chief minister of Gujarat and his close links with big industrialists such as Adani helped him reinvent himself as the pro-business face of modern economic progress. In return, Adani was granted concessions that allowed his wealth and stature to grow exponentially.
When Modi was first elected prime minister, he flew back to Delhi on Adani’s private plane. Adani then regularly accompanied Modi on international trips, after which his empire was often able to strike lucrative business deals in those countries. Within India, Adani’s empire grew to a colossal size, encompassing not just coal power and ports, but also airports, cement, apples, edible oils, grains, data storage and a television news channel.
Much of this expansion and growing monopoly of the Adani Group was made possible by contracts given by the Modi government, or state governments run by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party. It resulted in allegations of favouritism and “crony capitalism” from political opponents of Modi, while journalists who tried to investigate the Adani Group found themselves harassed and charged. The Adani Group has denied all allegations of favouritism and political patronage.
While allegations of illegal activity have dogged the Adani Group for more than a decade, the relationship between Modi and Adani has come under increasing scrutiny as claims of corruption and stock market manipulation by the group have emerged in the past couple of years.
In January 2023, a report by US financial firm Hindenburg accused the Adani Group of pulling off the “largest corporate con in history” through stock manipulation, eye-watering levels of debt and secret offshore accounts. The Adani Group dismissed the allegations as baseless. Later that year, an investigation by the Guardian and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project published evidence that the Adani Group had used secret offshore funds to buy their own shares. At the time, a spokesperson for the Adani Group claimed the investigation was intended to “wilfully to defame, disparage, erode value of and cause loss” to it. “All the Adani Group’s publicly listed entities are in compliance with all applicable laws,” they said.
The Indian government’s own financial investigation agencies have been accused by critics of failing to properly investigate Adani and his conglomerate.
On Thursday, the US indictment directly accused Adani and his executives of agreeing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bribes to Indian government officials between 2020 and 2024, charges they deny. Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent leader of India’s political opposition, called for Adani’s immediate arrest. “I am wondering why Mr Adani is still running around a free man in this country?” he said.
