Monday 2nd December, 2024

India’s Adani Group has been in the news of late —for all the wrong reasons. It has come under fire for very serious corporate malpractices for the umpteenth time. This time around, it has had legal action in the US to contend with. The US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, has made an official announcement that a five-count criminal indictment was unsealed on 20 Nov., 2024, in federal court in Brooklyn, inter alia, charging Adani Group Chairman Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, and some executives of the Indian Energy Company, with ‘conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from US investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements.’

Curiously, legal action against the Adani Group bigwigs, in the US, does not seem to have caused much concern to Sri Lanka, which has been described by the international media as one of the four countries that have come out in support of the Indian conglomerate under a cloud. Other backers of the Adani Group have been named as Israel, the UAE and Tanzania.

Cabinet Spokesman and Media Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has gone on record as saying that the NPP government is looking into the matter and reports have been called from ministries involving the Adani projects here. But the Sri Lanka Ports Authority reportedly lost no time in declaring its continued confidence in Adani’s role in expanding Sri Lanka’s port infrastructure, according to media reports. This, it has done although the outlook of several Adani companies which are affiliates or parents of project companies in Sri Lanka have been cut to negative by global rating agencies, after the institution of legal action in the US against the group. Sri Lanka should have been particularly concerned about the reports that the US International Development Finance Corporation, which is partially funding the Colombo port terminal, has reportedly said it continues to conduct due diligence to ensure that all aspects of the project meet its rigorous standards before any loan disbursements are made, and it hasn’t concluded a final agreement on the loan worth $500 million to the Adani Group under scrutiny.

When the indictment of the Adani grandees in the US became known internationally, one expected the JVP-led NPP government, which has embarked on a crusade against corruption, to seize the opportunity to order a high-level investigation into the questionable deals its predecessor entered into with the Adani Group. Environmental outfits, Opposition parties, and good governance activists have been calling for the cancellation of Sri Lanka’s agreements with the Adani Group.

The NPP government should have emulated Bangladesh in handling the very serious issue at hand. A review committee formed by Bangladesh’s interim government has recommended assigning an investigation agency to probe power agreements inked by ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime with the Adani Group, and others. That is the way a country should act to ensure that its national interest prevails over everything else.

The JVP-NPP combine very effectively campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, condemning its opponents as corrupt, mostly on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations, and won elections pledging to rid the country of bribery and corruption. Having done so, it ought to explain why it has allowed Sri Lanka to be bracketed with the countries that are supporting the Adani Group despite a host of damning allegations against it, especially in the US. Such a categorisation is the last thing this country needs at a time when its image, which suffered immense damage under previous governments, has to be repaired to attract foreign investors. Is the NPP government under pressure from India to back Adani, who is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi?

Let the NPP government, which pontificates ad nauseam about the virtues of transparency, integrity and corporate best practices, be urged to muster courage to order a thorough probe into Sri Lanka’s agreements with the tainted Adani Group.