Will clarify matter in 10 days: Adani CFO

Adani Group's finance chief on Friday rejected US allegations that group executives, including Chairman Gautam Adani, were part of a $265 million bribery scheme, and said the accused would clarify the US allegations in 10 days.

“We reject all of this strongly on behalf of the individuals,” Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh told reporters at an event in Mumbai.

“We believe it is not warranted, we know for sure 100% that nothing of this sort happened. If we were paying that amount of cash to someone I would certainly know, so we know nothing happened,” Singh said.

US authorities accused Adani, 62, his nephew and executive director Sagar Adani and managing director of Adani Green, Vneet S Jaain, of being part of a scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure Indian solar power supply contracts, and misleading US investors during fund raises there.

The ports-to-power conglomerate has previously denied the charges as “baseless” and vowed to seek all possible legal recourse. “As a group there will not be any action (on the US indictment) but individuals will be taking steps,” Singh said on Friday.

The US indictment has had major ripple effects: Adani shares have plummeted last week, at least one Indian state is reviewing its power deal with Adani, the Parliament has been disrupted amid political uproar and TotalEnergies has decided it will not make any more investments in the group.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the country's first official reaction to Adani’s indictment, said on Friday that bribery allegations against the billionaire was a legal issue between private companies and the US Department of Justice and that New Delhi had not received any request on this case from Washington.

Meanwhile, backing the Adani Group, rating agency CRISIL Ratings said the conglomerate has sufficient liquidity and operational cash flows to meet debt obligations and committed capex and that there has been no negative actions so far by lenders and investors following the indictment.

Group has healthy EBITDA, cash balance: CRISIL

Adani Group, which has flexibility to reduce certain discretionary capital expenditure (capex) depending on developments in financial markets and future capital availability, has a healthy EBITDA and cash balance that reduces its dependence on external debt to sustain operations, rating agency CRISIL Ratings said on Friday.