Battling to win back credibility with investors after a damaging short seller attack last year, India’s powerful Adani Group repeatedly flew business partners and journalists to its showpiece “green” project: a vast solar and wind farm in Khavda in the north-western state of Gujarat.
Now Adani’s renewable power business is itself at the heart of even more perilous allegations levelled against one of India’s biggest conglomerates, a sprawling industrial powerhouse whose rise has shadowed the political ascent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for two and a half decades.
US criminal and civil charges accusing the group’s founder Gautam Adani of involvement in a $265mn bribery scheme have startled Indian businesspeople and given potent ammunition to Modi’s parliamentary opponents.