Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest man, abruptly found himself at the center of a firestorm on Wednesday after prominent short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged his India-based business empire was built through fraud. All about Gautam Adani and Hindenburg Research allegations.
Adani, 60, experienced a rise in personal wealth last year even as the global economy suffered a period of slowing growth. He is chairman of Adani Group, a sprawling $21 billion conglomerate that owns many of India’s airports, the nation’s largest private-sector port, the media giant New Delhi Television, and many other holdings.
A college dropout, Adani began his career in the diamond industry before joining a plastics factory run by his brother, according to the Financial Times. Eventually, Adani formed his own company, which began as an import-export operation in the commodities sector and gradually expanded to other initiatives.
A bio on Adani Group’s website describes its namesake founder as a “first-generation entrepreneur” who is focused on “nation-building” through infrastructure development. He is married and has two sons, Karan and Jeet.
“For Mr. Adani, nation-building means transforming India’s coastline by building a string of ports and logistics hubs,” the bio reads. “For him, nation-building also means strengthening the country’s energy security and mitigating the urban-rural divide by delivering electricity to several hundreds of millions living in the hinterlands of India.”
Aside from his high-profile business career, Adani also survived the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, as well as a kidnapping and ransom attempt in 1998, according to the BBC and other outlets.
Adani has faced his fair share of criticism during a rise to international wealth and prominence. Critics have scrutinized his close relationship with and support of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The industrialist is so well-connected in India’s political circles that he has been referred to as “Modi’s Rockefeller.”
Adani was an early booster of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party. In 2014, Modi reportedly flew to the capital city of New Delhi on Adani’s private jet to take over as prime minister. His wealth ballooned since Modi took power, rising from roughly $5 billion in 2014 to a whopping $121 billion at the end of 2022, according to Bloomberg.
During that period, Adani Group has landed various government contracts and infrastructure projects, according to the Financial Times.
Adani’s net worth skyrocketed by $44 billion last year more than any other individual tracked by Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index as he jetted past the likes of Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.
But the Adani Group’s empire faced unprecedented scrutiny after Hindenburg – an influential firm that previously targeted the electric vehicle firms Nikola and Lordstown Motors – claimed to have “uncovered evidence of brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering at Adani, taking place over the course of decades.”
After Hindenburg’s damning report, Forbes estimated Adani to be the world’s fourth-richest person, with a net worth of $119.1 billion, trailing billionaires Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk and Bezos. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index also placed Adani as the fourth-wealthiest person and his wealth at $119 billion.
A US research firm accused Adani of pulling “the largest con in corporate history”
