Meet the defendants charged in US indictment of Gautam Adani?

US prosecutors have charged Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, founder of a conglomerate named after him, and seven others in an alleged bribery and fraud scheme related to a renewable energy project in India.

The authorities said Adani and the other defendants agreed to pay about $265 million in bribes to Indian officials to obtain contracts.

The Adani Group denied the charges as baseless and that it would seek "all possible legal recourse".

Here are key details of the people charged by the US authorities:

Gautam Adani, 62, is Asia's wealthiest person after countryman Mukesh Ambani with a net worth of $57.8 billion, according to Forbes. He set up the Adani Group in 1988, beginning with commodities trading.
He and his nephew Sagar are accused of orchestrating the scheme to secure a solar energy project in India and misleading the company's investors during a $750 million bond offering, which raised about $175 million from U.S. investors.

Sagar Adani is credited with building the solar and wind portfolio of Adani Green Energy ADNA.NS and currently oversees its "organization building as well as all strategic and financial matters", according to its website. He is an executive director of Adani Green.

Vneet Jaain has been the managing director of Adani Green Energy since 2020. Before that, he headed other Adani group firms such as Adani Power and Adani Infrastructure, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ranjit Gupta, between 2019 and 2022, was the chief executive officer of energy firm Azure Power Global, whose stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange until November 2023.
U.S. authorities allege that Gupta conspired with Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain to pay bribes to Indian government officials for Adani Green and Azure Power to secure a solar energy project in India.
Azure Power did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
Gupta, currently CEO of energy firm Ocior Energy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ocior Energy did not immediately respond to a separate Reuters request for comment.

Cyril Cabanes, who U.S. court documents said was a citizen of Australia and France who resided in Singapore, was the managing director of infrastructure overseeing Asia Pacific and Middle East regions at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a Canadian investment firm, between 2016 and 2023.
The indictment document said that an unnamed unit of CDPQ is the top stakeholder of Azure Power.
Cabanes, his then-CDPQ colleagues Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal are accused of joining the conspiracy between 2021 and 2022.
Cabanes did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

Saurabh Agarwal worked with a company associated CDPQ from May 2017 until July 2023, when he reported to Cabanes.
CDPQ on Thursday said it was aware of the charges against its former employees. "Those employees were all terminated in 2023 and CDPQ is cooperating with the U.S. authorities," it said.
Reuters could not immediately reach Agarwal for comment.

Deepak Malhotra was Director of infrastructure, South Asia, at CDPQ when he joined the board of Azure Power in 2019. He resigned from the board in 2023, along with Cabanes.
Reuters could not immediately reach Malhotra for comment.

Rupesh Agarwal is currently a co-chair at Indian industry lobby group FICCI Renewable Energy CEO Council. From July 2022 to August 2022, the period mentioned in the indictment document, he was the Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at Azure.
Reuters could not immediately reach Agarwal for comment.

Meanwhile, Indian opposition parties demanded a probe on Thursday into allegations of wrongdoing by the Adani Group and said they would raise the issue in parliament after its chair Gautam Adani was charged in the U.S. over an alleged bribery scheme.

Billionaire Adani was indicted by U.S. prosecutors for his alleged role in a $265 million bribery and fraud scheme and arrest warrants were issued for him and his nephew, plunging his conglomerate deep into crisis for the second time in two years.

The Adani Group rejected the allegations as baseless and said it complied fully with all laws.

Adani has been the target of Indian opposition parties who say that he and his conglomerate have been protected by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, charges both deny.

Modi’s opponents say he has longstanding ties with Adani, going back nearly two decades to when Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, to which Adani also belongs.

They accuse the government of favouring the group in business deals, charges the government has rejected as "wild allegations".

"We are raising this issue, it is my responsibility to raise this issue as leader of opposition," Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Congress party, told reporters when asked if he would bring it up in parliament next week.

Gandhi has led the opposition attack against Modi for what he says are Modi's links to Adani since U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research issued a report last year accusing the Adani group of using offshore tax havens improperly - which the company has denied.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called for a comprehensive parliamentary probe into "every aspect of the working of the Adani Group".

Sanjay Singh, a lawmaker from the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, said the indictment was a serious matter.

"All pending matters against Adani should be probed by an investigation agency and monitored by the Supreme Court," Singh said.

There was no immediate response to the indictment from the Indian government.

However, Amit Malviya, a leader of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and its IT cell head, said Congress should not get "needlessly excited".

"The document you quote says, 'The charges in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty'," he said in response to a post by Congress spokesman Jairam Ramesh seeking a parliamentary probe.

"The timing of the report, just before the parliament session and Donal(d) Trump's impending presidency raises several questions," he said, without elaborating.