New Delhi: The department of legal affairs under the Union law and justice ministry denied receiving a request from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking help last month in serving summon to Gautam Adani and his nephew in a civil case, The Wire reported citing The Hindu.
An RTI reply obtained by The Hindu quoted the department of legal affairs as saying that ‘no such request [had] been received’ as of February 21.
The date mentioned comes three days after the SEC informed a New York court that it had sought New Delhi’s assistance.
In November, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Adani and his nephew Sagar of working a scheme to bribe Indian government officials for a solar power project alongside alleging that the duo misled US investors with false claims ‘during a 2021 debt offering by Adani Green Energy’.
Meanwhile, it accused Cyril Cabanes, a former director of Azure Power, of facilitating the ‘authorisation of bribes in furtherance of the scheme’.
Subsequently, a related criminal case has been filed against Adani and seven others accusing them of ‘conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud’.
However, the Adani Group called the charges ‘ baseless’.
Meanwhile, the SEC on February 18 said that its staff had contacted ‘Defendants [the Adanis] or their counsel’ alongside sending them ‘Notices of Lawsuit and Requests for Waiver of Service of Summons, including copies of the Complaint.’