Kidnapped for ransom in 1998, 26/11 survivor Gautam Adani faces biggest trial

New Delhi: He was kidnapped by bandits in 1998 for ransom, and when terrorists attacked Mumbai almost 11 years later, he was among the hostages held at the seafront Taj Hotel. School dropout Gautam Adani's knack for surviving crises and his business acumen have propelled him to the ranks of India's richest, but he now faces possibly the biggest trial.

The 62-year founder of a sprawling ports-to-energy conglomerate is facing grave accusations of bribery and securities fraud in two separate cases brought by the US authorities.

He may be the first big Indian business leader to face such charges.

US prosecutors have charged him and seven others, including his nephew Sagar, of being part of a scheme to pay USD 265 million bribes to Indian officials in exchange for favourable terms of solar energy contracts that could potentially help his group earn USD 2 billion in profits.

Adani's listed firms saw USD 26 billion being wiped out on Thursday - the biggest single-day loss of market value (twice the size of what the group saw during the attack by US short-seller Hindenburg Research last year).

The charges, which his group has denied and called baseless, can potentially put his global ambitions on hold, starting with his travel. A threat of being questioned may mean he may choose not to travel to the US and a few other Western destinations.

More than his personal status, at stake, is the reputation of an empire the first-generation entrepreneur built over three and a half decades.

Early life

Born in a Jain family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was the seventh of eight children born to Shantilal Adani, a textile merchant, and Shanta Adani.

After dropping out of school, Adani moved to Mumbai at the age of 16 years, working for a while as a diamond sorter in the gem trade. He returned to Gujarat in 1981 to help his elder brother Mahasukhbhai run a small-scale PVC film factory the family had acquired in Ahmedabad.

In 1988, he set up a commodities trading venture under Adani Exports and listed it on the bourses in 1994. The firm is now called Adani Enterprises.

Kidnapped for ransom

By the mid-1990s, his business successes started attracting attention, including the unwelcome kind. On January 1, 1998, Adani and his associate Shantilal Patel were abducted at gunpoint after they left Karnavati Club in Ahmedabad in a car.

They were held allegedly by gangsters Fazlu Rehman and Bhogilal Darji alias Mama (who were later acquitted for lack of evidence) for a reported $1.5-2 million ransom. Both were let off a day later, but it is not known if the ransom was paid.

Surviving Mumbai terror attack

On November 26, 2008, he was dining at Mumbai's iconic Taj Hotel with Dubai Port CEO Mohammed Sharaf. As he was about to exit after paying bills, a few associates called for a second round of meetings over a cup of coffee. That's when terrorists attacked, which killed 160.

Adani, who along with other guests, was escorted first to the hotel kitchen and then to the basement by the staff, later said he would have been caught in the attack had he made it to the exit after paying bills for the dinner.

Adani spent the night in the basement and then in a hall before being rescued by commandos the next morning. After landing at the Ahmedabad airport in his private aircraft on November 27, Adani said, "I saw death at a distance of just 15 feet".

Business empire

Starting as a commodities trader in 1988, Adani started operating a port at Mundra on the Gujarat coast a decade later. He grew the business to become India's largest port operator.

There was no looking back after that. He rapidly expanded his business empire into power generation, mining, edible oil, gas distribution and renewable energy. This came alongside the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat. Adani's business interests expanded into airports, cement and more recently media.

Adani has repeatedly denied getting any favourable treatment from Modi when he was the chief minister or now as the Prime Minister.

He used Adani Enterprises as an incubator of new businesses before spinning them off into separate listed companies. The stocks of his seven listed companies surged -- some cases up to 1,500 per cent in the last three years amid aggressive expansion.

He overtook Mukesh Ambani of Reliance as India's richest and even briefly became the world's wealthiest person after Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He is now ranked 25th richest, with a net worth of about $57.6 billion, less than half of what it was in 2022.

In little over a decade, his group has become India's largest private sector power producer and will be the world's largest renewable company by 2030. It is the largest airport operator in India.

It is India's largest integrated energy player, spanning electricity generation, transmission and distribution, LNG and LPG terminals, city gas and piped gas distribution. His group has become the country's second-largest cement manufacturer and the highest-valued FMCG company following the IPO of Adani Wilmar.

It is diversifying rapidly into other sectors, including clean energy, hydrogen, aircraft maintenance, manufacturing, telecom, data centres and logistics.

In recent years, the $220 billion conglomerate has attracted foreign investors like Total Energies of France for its renewable energy, city gas and hydrogen projects.

Controversies

In Australia, Adani group is still dealing with negative publicity for its Carmichael coal mine project in Queensland on concerns of carbon emissions and damage to the Great Barrier Reef. It won approval in 2019 after a decade-long struggle with regulators and environmentalists.

More recently, its $900-million container transhipment project at Vizhinjam port in Kerala faced protests from local fishermen on concerns of the coastal erosion undermining their livelihood. The four-month-long protests were called off last month.

Reputation challenge

Activist short seller Hindenburg Research, the firm which caught global attention with takedowns of electric-vehicle makers Nikola and Lordstown Motors, in a January 2023 report alleged that the Adani Group "engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades".

Hindenburg called out the conglomerate's "substantial debt", which includes pledging shares for loans; that Adani's brother Vinod "manages a vast labyrinth of offshore shell entities" that move billions into group companies without required disclosure; and that its auditor "hardly seems capable of complex audit work".

Adani rejected all allegations and threatened to sue Hindenburg for its "reckless" attempt to sabotage the mega share sale at Adani Enterprises.

But this did not stop the free-fall at group stocks, which at the lowest point saw $150 billion in market value being eroded. The stocks recovered most of the losses as the group focused on business operations and got marquee investors like GQG to invest.

The latest charges may prove to be his biggest challenge. Like with all legal action, the Adanis must be presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, but until then the conglomerate may continue to be under the clot.