Foreign Official #1 is how the indictment order by the United States identifies a high-ranking official in Andhra Pradesh whom Gautam Adani personally met in August 2021 to offer bribes for getting solar contracts.

The indictment order does not reveal the official’s name. But a complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, of which TNM/Scroll have a copy, has revealed that the official was none other than then Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.

In August 2021, Gautam Adani met personally with the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh about the fact that Andhra Pradesh had not entered into a Power Supply Agreement with SECI and the “incentives” needed to cause Andhra Pradesh to do so,” the complaint says.

Shortly after the meeting, Andhra Pradesh agreed to purchase seven gigawatts of power from the Solar Energy Corporation of India, which then went on to sign a power purchase agreement with Adani Green and another firm, Azure Power.

SECI, a central government firm, had awarded tenders to the Adani Group and Azure Power in 2019 and 2020, to supply 12 gigawatts of solar-generated electricity at a specified price. The SECI, in turn, needed to find state power companies that would be willing to buy the electricity at that price. According to US investigators, after SECI was unable to find buyers for the power because of high prices, Adani and Azure had conspired to offer bribes to state officials.

Referring to the August 2021 meeting, the complaint by the US Securities and Exchange Commission notes: “At this meeting or in connection with that meeting, Gautam Adani paid or promised a bribe to Andhra Pradesh government officials to cause the relevant Andhra Pradesh government entities to enter into Power Supply Agreements with SECI for the purchase of 7,000 MW of power capacity.”

It added that “shortly after the meeting, communications internal to Adani Green and Azure reflected that Andhra Pradesh had agreed to buy power from SECI”. The complaint concluded: “In other words, the bribes paid or promised worked.”

According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the bribe offered was Rs 25 lakh per megawatt – which comes to a total of Rs 1,750 crores.

“Later statements by Adani Green executives to executives of Azure… indicated that the Andhra Pradesh bribe payment was approximately $200 million. This was also consistent with Adani Green’s internal records,” the complaint states.

Jagan Mohan Reddy’s office was asked for a comment. The office first said that Jagan was not named in the indictment, when it was pointed out that the Chief Minister is mentioned in the complaint, the office said they will get back with a response.

What was the power agreement with Andhra?

The PSA or power sale agreement, was signed on December 1, 2021, between three discoms of Andhra Pradesh (APSPDCL, APEPDCL, APCPDCL), and SECI. The 7000 MW (seven gigawatts) of solar power was to be supplied by SECI to the discoms in three tranches – 3000 MW in 2024, 3000 MW in 2025 and 1000 MW in 2026.

The government said it was procuring solar power to supply free power to 18 lakh farmers in the state for nine hours daily. Andhra is now expected to pay SECI Rs 2.42 to Rs 2.54 per kilowatt-hour, as approved by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission.

The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission has also approved a subsequent PSA replacing Azure with Adani Energy, but the approval is subject to the outcome of a PIL in the Andhra Pradesh High Court filed by CPI leader K Ramakrishna against the purchase of solar power from SECI.

According to the initial agreement, SECI was to procure two-thirds of the total power (4667 MW) from Adani Renewables Energy, and one-third (2333 MW) from Azure Power for supplying to Andhra Pradesh discoms.

The bribe amount of Rs 1,750 crore was also split proportionately between Adani Energy and Azure, according to the charges. And in lieu of paying its share of the bribe amount to Adani Energy (Rs 583 crore), Azure allegedly returned its share of the Andhra-related PPAs to SECI under the Adanis’ influence, who later allegedly influenced SECI to make sure the agreement went to Adani Energy.

Corruption allegations in Azure Power’s return of Andhra-related solar power deals

In April, 2022, around five months after the Andhra solar power deal was signed, Gautam Adani, Vneet S Jaain (Managing Director and CEO of Adani Green Energy), Ranjit Gupta (then CEO of Azure Power) and another Indian executive of Azure Power had allegedly planned to meet in Delhi to discuss the ‘bribery scheme’. Vneet Jaain had allegedly taken a picture of a document on his phone, which summarised the amounts that Azure Power owed Adani Green Energy for its share of the bribes.

According to this document, Azure owed Adani Rs 55 crore for the power purchase agreements for 650 megawatts of solar power for Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Jammu and Kashmir. For the 2333 MW to be supplied to the Andhra discoms, the summary allegedly showed that Azure owed Rs 583 crore (one-third of the Rs 1,750 crore bribe amount).

But at the same time as the scheduled meeting, Ranjit Gupta was made to resign as the CEO of Azure. Rupesh Agarwal, then the company’s Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer, allegedly met with Gautam Adani and his associates in Ahmedabad on April 29, 2022. Gautam Adani allegedly explained the entire bribery scheme to Rupesh. He also allegedly suggested that to conceal the payment of its share of the bribes, Azure could transfer the PPAs for the 2333 MW meant for Andhra to Adani Green Energy.

Rupesh even allegedly prepared Excel and PowerPoint documents to “determine which corrupt payment option was best.” One of the options was to transfer the 2333 MW PPAs pertaining to Andhra to Adani Green Energy. Gautam Adani allegedly said he would manage the SECI approvals needed to transfer the 2333 GW PPAs. The 650 MW agreement meant to cater to the remaining states would remain with Azure.

But transferring the 2.3 GW deal to Adani Energy needed approval from Azure’s Board of Directors. Rupesh and other executives associated with Canadian investor CPDQ (Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra) allegedly claimed that Azure must return the 2.3 GW PPAs to SECI because of “then-ongoing litigation regarding the project and deteriorating economics.” But these reasons were meant to “obfuscate the true reason [Azure] was returning the projects to SECI,” to meet Adani Energy’s bribe demands, according to the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani allegedly followed the developments with Azure’s Board of Directors closely, with Sagar sending a message to Gautam Adani on November 22, 2022, saying there was a board meeting two days later when the final letter to SECI was likely to be approved, and that they would “keep close track and chase it up properly." The DOJ also cited other alleged text messages from Sagar to Gautam Adani which suggest that they were closely monitoring and influencing Azure Group’s return of the 2.3 GW PPAs.

Personnel of Adani Green Energy “also secretly influenced the SECI process for reallocation of the 2.3 GW PPA to [Adani Energy]'s subsidiary, including by directing [Azure Power]'s submissions to SECI and by obtaining and revising internal SECI documents.

On March 18, 2024, SECI officially terminated the 2.3 GW PPAs with Azure and authorised its reallocation, according to the DOJ. However, according to the Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission, on December 29, 2023, SECI entered a supplemental PSA to the previous PSA signed in December 2021. Through this supplemental PSA, “the 2.3 GW earlier from Azure was substituted with Adani Renewable Energy without altering the tariff and terms of the PSA.”

This article is part of a collaborative series reporting on the US charges against Adani Group.

With inputs from Jahnavi R