EDITORIAL: MODI’S CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST
Vinod Mubayi
Despite the unexpected post-Diwali gift handed to the BJP and its allies by voters in Maharashtra, other developments on the international scene suggest that the chickens let loose by the Modi regime in the US and Canada are now coming home to roost along with the shenanigans of Modi’s BFF and favorite business partner, Gautam Adani, who has been indicted on both criminal and civil charges in the US.
The assassination of a pro-Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia, Canada last year and the attempted killing of a Sikh lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York that was allegedly orchestrated by an agent of India’s RAW agency has been met in India with a fair amount of bluster as far as Canada is concerned but with a much quieter and more subdued demeanor to the charges leveled in the US. In the plot against Pannun, the US Department of Justice has indicted an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, who is currently in US custody, and his handler, an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s equivalent of the CIA, identified as Vikash Yadav, who is presumed to be in India. The indictment, which contains detailed accounts of conversations between Yadav and Gupta and a presumed “hit-man”, who eventually turned out to be an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, also ties these Indian agents to the killing of Nijjar in Canada and other acts of intimidation against some members of the Indian diaspora.
The Modi regime’s indignation at the charges leveled by Canadian authorities may be a bit misplaced once it is realized that these charges are very likely based on intelligence gained by the vast US intelligence network and shared with Canada, which is part of the US Five Eyes network. Moreover, the angry rejection by an Indian government spokesman of a statement by Canada’s Deputy Foreign Minister that Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister and the No. 2 person in the Indian government, was “involved” in the assassination plots should also be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. Amit Shah is no stranger to “involvement” in murder plots if one recalls that a little over a decade ago, he was in jail in India charged by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation CBI (equivalent to America’s FBI) of having orchestrated several murders in Gujarat when he was the state’s Home Minister under Modi. He was somewhat mysteriously released and exonerated after Modi came to power as India’s Prime Minister in 2014. All these charges, including the revelations about the use of criminal members of the Punjab-based Lawrence Bishnoi gang by Indian agencies in the Nijjar killing and in several other acts of intimidation and harassment of members of the Indian diaspora, will, in all probability, be authenticated in open court once the US trial of the men charged in the plot to kill Pannun begins and cause further international embarrassment to the Indian government.
A question that arises at this stage and deserves some contemplation if not a complete answer is: Why is the Modi regime acting like the Israeli Mossad in sending agents to plot assassinations of Khalistani activists in the Sikh diaspora in US and Canada when the movement for Khalistan (an independent Sikh state to be carved out of Punjab) has itself dwindled to negligible levels in India? The fact that such plots are not a figment of imagination but quite real is attested to by the warnings FBI agents have been known to have given to several potential victims of such plots; they have been asked to be cautious and take measures to protect themselves. Is the Modi regime’s attempt to even physically eliminate its opponents and critics among segments of the Indian diaspora a tactic to demonstrate to the Indian public its muscular and forceful approach to safeguarding India from its perceived “anti-national” enemies? This muscularity and projection of strength through violence was advocated and promoted by the ideologues of Hindutva like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and stands in stark contrast to the ideal of ahimsa (non-violence) championed by Mahatma Gandhi.
The other major embarrassment of course is the criminal indictment of Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani along with several other Adani associates by prosecutors from the US Department of Justice on fraud and corruption charges. Of the eight individuals charged by the DOJ, five have been indicted on violation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and three, including Gautam Adani, have been indicted on securities and wire fraud charges. DOJ issued a five-count criminal indictment that charged Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, all executives of Adani Green Energy Limited with conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from U.S. investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements. The indictment also charged associates of Adani with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA, a US law) in connection with a bribery scheme perpetrated by Adani to win very large solar projects in India. The indictment alleged that “the defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors.” The bribes to be paid amounted to around $265 million (or about Rs. 2029 crores at the then prevailing rate of exchange) and the Adanis were charged with defrauding US investors by raising capital on the basis of false statements about bribery and corruption while the associates were charged with attempting to conceal the bribery conspiracy by obstructing the government’s investigation. In a parallel civil indictment, the US Securities and Exchange (SEC) charged the Adanis with violating the antifraud provisions of federal securities laws. The SEC alleged that “Gautam and Sagar Adani induced U.S. investors to buy Adani Green bonds through an offering process that misrepresented not only that Adani Green had a robust anti-bribery compliance program but also that the company’s senior management had not and would not pay or promise to pay bribes.”
In the Modi regime era, i.e., since May 2014, the boundary line between where the Indian state stops and Adani enterprise begins is extremely blurred, so much so that the word Modani has been coined to signify this close coupling. So, what may be regarded as a mundane prosecution of a business in the US for breaching federal law has an altogether different provenance in India. Crony capitalism has been assiduously promoted in Modi’s India in a manner similar to the chaebol family-based industrial groups in South Korea some decades ago and none more single-mindedly than Adani’s multifarious businesses, who has been rewarded with control of much of India’s infrastructure from ports and airports to coal mining, power generation, and renewable energy. Not only domestically, Adani has also been given unstinting diplomatic support from the Modi regime in bidding for infrastructure projects abroad in Australia, Israel, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and so on.
Adani and Modi both come from Gujarat and Adani’s phenomenal rise was greatly assisted by Modi when he was chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 until he became prime minister in 2014. Adani’s star was briefly dimmed in January 2023 when the New York firm Hindenburg Research published a detailed report of malfeasance at various Adani companies and accused him of “pulling the largest con in corporate history.” Adani shares briefly tanked, however, the complete failure of any regulatory or judicial body in India to launch an honest investigation of Adani businesses, led to their recovery until the DOJ indictment was issued last month.
The genesis of the indictment arises from the corrupt nexus between the state and business in India in infrastructure projects. This was illustrated several years by the Enron scandal in Maharashtra. In this instance, Adani Green Energy and its associate Azure Power, whose former executives were also indicted by DOJ, had won a bid to supply solar generated power to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a central government body, which would in turn supply that power to electricity distribution companies, or discoms, in various states. Several discoms, however, balked initially at buying power at the rate of Adani Green Energy’s winning bid price so the necessity arose of sweetening the deal by offering bribes to officials to facilitate the power purchase. How DOJ or the FBI or the SEC became aware of the bribes is a matter of conjecture, but the indictment details that the US investigative agencies had obtained a court order to seize Sagar Adani’s electronic devices where the alleged bribery details were discovered.
What is interesting is that of the states where bribes are alleged to have been given, only one, J&K, that had been downgraded to a union territory under the Center, was run by a BJP appointee, the others, Andhra, then ruled by the YSR Congress under Jagan Reddy, Orissa under BJD, Chhattisgarh under Congress and Tamil Nadu under DMK were non-BJP states ruled by opposition parties. Even more intriguing is the fact that the Modi regime, which in the past had not hesitated to put opposition politicians in jail at the slightest opportunity, has shown no urgency so far to make the Enforcement Directorate, the Income Tax authorities, or the CBI go after Jagan Reddy, Naveen Patnaik, M K Stalin, or Bhupesh Baghel, former chief ministers and one serving chief minister (Stalin), where the bribes were allegedly paid. It is also hardly surprising that India’s financial regulator SEBI, charged with upholding the interests of Indian investors, has not stirred itself to launch a fresh investigation of Adani after the significant drop in its share price following the DOJ. It is well-known that SEBI’s chair Madhabi Puri Buch is deeply conflicted in any matter involving Adani. Nor has the higher judiciary shown much initiative to inquire into this affair so far. It is all standard operating procedure when corruption in very high places is involved.
Officially, the Government of India, through its External Affairs Ministry spokesperson, denied any concern or interest in the matter calling it an issue between a private party and law enforcement in a foreign country. If only! As a Modani matter, it is the equivalent of a political bombshell. No doubt, Modi can continue to resist calls by the opposition parties in Parliament for a parliamentary investigation and Adani’s arrest. But the prospect of a forthcoming trial in the US and the grave doubts being cast on India’s business environment will deter much needed foreign investment in India as well as the prospects for Indian companies to raise funds in foreign countries. After all, Adani and his cohorts are in this pickle precisely because they raised hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, include $175 million from US investors, to fund their solar project. Adani and Modi may be hoping that Donald Trump, who assumes the presidency in about six weeks and has expressed his opposition to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as unduly restrictive for US business, will replace the US Attorney and drop the DOJ case. While choosing another US Attorney is Trump’s prerogative, what will happen in future is a matter of conjecture while the damage to Modi India’s reputation as a worthwhile place to invest is already done. In fact, the leveling of corruption charges has already begun to impact Adani’s foreign ventures. Kenya has canceled a billion dollar Adani project for airports and other infrastructure; Sri Lanka, under its new government, has announced that it will re-examine the hundreds of millions of dollars Adani renewable wind energy project that was signed in the earlier Rajpaksa regime with considerable help from the Indian government, and Bangladesh too that, under the now ousted Sheikh Hasina regime, had agreed to a very expensive deal to import electricity from an Adani plant in India, has said it will reconsider the project.
To conclude, much as Modi would like his legacy to be Viksit Bharat (Developed India) it seems more likely that it will be Bhrasht Bharat (Corrupt India).
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