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Adani's influence to governments.

 When the Adani Group broke ground on a new con­tainer ter­minal at Colombo port late last year, it

was a win not just for the Indian con­glom­er­ate but for the gov­ern­ment in New Delhi that hoped to extend influ­ence in Sri Lanka. While Sri Lanka rejec­ted an earlier pro­posal amid protests about a key asset fall­ing into for­eign hands, Adani even­tu­ally secured the major­ity stake in a $700mn deal to build and oper­ate the ter­minal. The Adani group, whose owner Gautam Adani has long­stand­ing ties with Modi, has in recent years clinched deals from Myan­mar to Israel as part of an ambi­tious over­seas expan­sion. The Adani Group’s over­seas for­ays faced intense scru­tiny fol­low­ing alleg­a­tions last month by US short-seller Hinden­burg Research that it has for dec­ades used fraud and mar­ket manip­u­la­tion to fuel its rise.

« This is Adani Ji’s for­eign policy,» Gandhi said, using a com­mon hon­or­ific to refer to Adani. «India’s min­istry of external affairs has been turned into Adani Group’s inter­na­tional expan­sion depart­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Modi,» said Praveen Chakrav­arty, a senior Con­gress party office bearer. Amit Shah, the home affairs min­is­ter and a power­ful Modi ally, said last week that «there is noth­ing to hide or be afraid of » in Con­gress’s alleg­a­tions that the rul­ing Bhar­atiya Janata party has favoured Adani. While many of these over­seas deals are in the early stages and not a mean­ing­ful con­trib­utor to Adani profits, they have been a source of prestige for the group.

Adani said it had been «suc­cess­fully doing over­seas projects for over 15 years inde­pend­ent of polit­ical parties in power», cit­ing deals in Indone­sia in 2008 and Aus­tralia in 2010. Dur­ing the visit, he announced a $1bn loan from the gov­ern­ment-run State Bank of India to sup­port the devel­op­ment of Adani’s Car­mi­chael coal mine in Queens­land, which has attrac­ted fierce cri­ti­cism from envir­on­ment­al­ists. Dur­ing Modi’s visit to Bangladesh the fol­low­ing year to see his coun­ter­part, Sheikh Has­ina, Adani Power signed a deal under which the Bangladesh Power Devel­op­ment Board would receive power from a coal-based plant in India worth about $2bn. Last month, a con­sor­tium led by Adani’s port divi­sion paid $1.2bn for the Haifa port in Israel, another coun­try with which New Delhi has sought to deepen ties.

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  1. Sam27 February 2023 at 09:58

    While Adani has certainly done some shady things can we really blame them? If the politicians never do anything without their own pockets being filled, how can you get ahead? How can you grow a company this size without doing things like this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Evan27 February 2023 at 10:06

      I partially agree with you. We shouldn't defend them for doing wrong things. Never. And yes this is not entirely their fault but the politicians are as much to blame for not creating an environment where bribes are not needed.

      Delete
    2. Sam27 February 2023 at 10:39

      I am not defending what Adani did or does and how they are trying to improve their image in foreign countries. I wish this wasn’t the case and we would live in a perfect world where the system would work well, without bribes or bad people and things. We aren’t and we probably never will. People in power get greedy so such things will endure unfortunately.

      Delete

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