Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani responded for the first time on Saturday to allegations by US authorities that he was part of a $265 million bribery scheme, saying that his ports-to-power conglomerate was committed to world class regulatory compliance.

“What I can tell you is that every attack makes us stronger and every obstacle becomes a stepping stone for a more resilient Adani Group,” Adani said in Jaipur.

“The fact is that despite a lot of the vested reporting, no one from the Adani side has been charged with any violation of the FCPA or any conspiracy to obstruct justice.

“Yet, in today’s world, negativity spreads faster than facts, and as we work through the legal process, I want to re-confirm our absolute commitment to world class regulatory compliance,” he added, without giving further details.

“Less than two weeks back, we faced a set of allegations from the US about compliance practices at Adani Green Energy. This is not the first time we have faced such challenges,” Adani said at an awards ceremony in Jaipur organised by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council. He was delivering the keynote address on ‘Breaking the status quo: an Adani perspective’.

This comes nearly three days after the group said that its founder and his nephew Sagar Adani have not been accused of violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and that they have been charged under securities and wire fraud that involves levy of monetary penalties.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had said on November 20 that it had charged Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and Cyril Cabanes, an executive of Azure Power Global Ltd, for “conduct arising out of a massive bribery scheme’’.

It alleged that the “bribery scheme was orchestrated to enable the two renewable energy companies to capitalise on a multi-billion-dollar solar energy project that the companies had been awarded by the Indian government’’.

Adani pointed out that in the group’s journey it has faced “bigger’’ challenges.

“However, these challenges have not broken us. Instead, they have defined us. They have made us tougher and give us the unshakeable belief that after every fall, we will rise again, stronger, and more resilient than before,’’ he noted.

Here, he referred to the resistance from NGOs to the group’s coal mine in Australia in 2010. This lasted for nearly a decade.

“In fact, it was so intense that we ended up funding the entire project of $10 billion with our own equity. While we now have a world class operating mine in Australia and it could be seen as a great sign of our resilience, the fact is that 100 per cent equity funding took away over $30 billion of debt financing from our green energy projects,’’ he said.

Here he also cited the allegations made by Hindenburg Research last year.

“We faced a short-selling attack initiated from abroad. This was not a typical financial strike; it was a double hit — targeting our financial stability and pulling us into a political controversy. All of this was further amplified by certain media with vested interests. But even in the face of such adversity, our commitment to our principles remained strong,’’ Adani said.

He pointed out that after the allegations the group came out with an all-time record financial results during the same year.