India’s $3.9 billion plan to help Modi’s mogul ally after U.S. charges
Debt was piling up quickly this spring for Gautam Adani — owner of a vast empire of Indian coal mines, airports, seaports and green energy ventures — and the bills were coming due.
India’s second richest man, whose net worth hovers around $90 billion, had been charged with bribery and fraud last year by U.S. authorities, and several major American and European banks he had looked to for loans were hesitant to help.
Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.
But the Indian government was crafting its own aid plan.
Internal documents obtained exclusively by The Washington Post detail how Indian officials drafted and pushed through a proposal in May to steer roughly $3.9 billion in investments to Adani’s businesses from the Life Insurance Corporation of India, or LIC — a state-owned entity primarily responsible for providing life insurance to poor and rural families.
The plan came to fruition the same month that Adani’s ports subsidiary needed to raise roughly $585 million in a bond issue to refinance existing debt. On May 30, Adani Group announced that the whole bond had been financed by a single investor — LIC — in a deal immediately decried by critics as a misuse of public funds.
Follow World news
Follow
The documents and interviews show it was just one piece of a larger plan by Indian authorities to direct taxpayer money to a conglomerate owned by one of the country’s most prominent and politically well-connected billionaires. It is a vivid illustration of Adani’s clout within the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his longtime ally, and of how officials in New Delhi have come to see his business empire as central to the country’s economic fortunes.
“This government supports Adani and will not allow any harm or any detriment to come to it,” said Hemindra Hazari, a Mumbai-based independent expert on Indian corporate finance.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, greets Gautam Adani during the opening of the Navi Mumbai International Airport on Oct. 8. (Rafiq Maqbool/AP)
This investigation is based on documents from LIC and the Indian Department of Financial Services (DFS), a branch of the country’s Finance Ministry, interviews with current and former officials at those agencies, as well as three Indian bankers familiar with Adani Group finances. All spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retribution.
“We categorically deny involvement in any alleged government plans to direct LIC funds,” Adani Group said in response to questions from The Washington Post. “LIC invests across multiple corporate groups — and suggesting preferential treatment for Adani is misleading. Moreover, LIC has earned returns from its exposure to our portfolio.”
The company said that “assertions of undue political favour are unfounded” and “our growth predates Mr Modi’s national leadership.”
LIC, DFS and Modi’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The investment plan was crafted by officials at DFS in coordination with LIC and India’s main government-funded think tank, NITI Aayog, the documents show, and approved by the Finance Ministry, according to two officials familiar with the matter. NITI Aayog did not respond to requests for comment.
Among the plan’s “strategic objectives,” according to DFS documents, were “signaling confidence in Adani group” and “encouraging participation from other investors” — at a time when the conglomerate had seen its overall debt rise by 20 percent over the last 12 months ending in June, according to company filings for the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years.
Months earlier, Adani had been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with allegedly perpetrating a “multi-billion-dollar scheme” to get funds from U.S. investors based on false and misleading information. In a separate civil case announced the same day, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the billionaire with violating securities law.
The U.S. legal proceedings “concern individuals, not Adani companies,” Adani Group said in its statement, adding that “we have categorically denied these allegations.”
National Students’ Union of India activists demonstrate against Adani on Nov. 21 in New Delhi. (Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images)
In the DFS documents, Adani was hailed as a “visionary entrepreneur” whose company has shown “remarkable resilience in the face of significant challenges.” And those challenges extend beyond the United States.
A 2023 report by Hindenburg, a now-defunct investment research firm, accused Adani Group of stock manipulation and financial irregularities — leading the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the country’s stock market regulator, to launch an investigation. SEBI dismissed two of the allegations in September, but others are still pending, according to a source familiar with the investigation and a report last month from Reuters.
“SEBI has already concluded investigations into related-party transactions and found no violations at Adani Ports, Adani Power or Adani Enterprises,” Adani Group said in its statement. “Assertions that probes remain ‘open’ misrepresent SEBI’s orders.”
SEBI did not respond to a request for comment.
LIC, which had purchased stakes in several Adani companies before the scandals, was advised by Indian Finance Ministry officials to invest roughly $3.4 billion in corporate bonds issued by Adani Group and use an additional estimated $507 million to significantly increase its stakes in several subsidiaries, the documents show. Ten-year government bonds offered “limited upside” compared with those issued by Adani’s conglomerate, Finance Ministry officials wrote in their analysis of the investment plan.
Four months after the port bond, it is unclear which, if any, of the additional recommended investments have been made by LIC.
Tim Buckley, director of the Australian think tank Climate Energy Finance and an expert on Adani’s corporate finances, said India’s backing of the billionaire shows that he is allowed to operate by a “different set of rules.”
An empire under strain
Adani’s empire has humble beginnings. In 1991, he was working with Cargill, helping the Minnesota-based food and agricultural company develop salt mines in the western state of Gujarat when its deal with the state government collapsed. Adani transformed the roughly 2,000 acres of abandoned desert into a deepwater port in the town of Mundra, which quickly became an infrastructural backbone for India at a moment of economic liberalization and expansion.
Full read:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
I thought next step was going to be economics professor from Bangladesh but will take this too. Well done RAW again 
