Thursday, 21 November 2024
Thursday, 21 November 2024
United States prosecutors have charged Indian billionaire Gautam Adani in an alleged multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme.
Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, two executives at Adani Green Energy – his nephew Sagar Adani and Vineet Jain – and others have been accused of agreeing to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to win “lucrative solar energy supply contracts” that are worth “billions of dollars”.
$250 million is around Rs 2,112 crore – that’s the amount that Gautam Adani is accused of using to bribe government officials. Roughly, because the Indian Rupee, as you know, keeps sliding against the dollar.
But what can this amount of money buy?
To put the scale of the allegation against Adani in perspective, The Telegraph Online looks at a list of things that you could have done if you had that kind of spare change.
For Rs 2,000 crore you could fund RRR, Pushpa 2, Kalki 2989 AD
The south Indian movie industry is famous for its larger-than-life heroes, high octane action, and big budgets. The total budget of RRR, Kalki 2898 AD, Adipurush, and Pushpa 2 stands at Rs 1,936 crore, about Rs 50 crore less than the alleged bribe paid to win solar energy supply contracts.
You could fund Chandrayaan
India launched Chandrayaan, its mission to explore the Moon, in 2008. There have been three missions till now and the cumulative budget of these has been Rs 1,977 crore.
If you had the kind of spare money that Adani is accused of paying as bribe, you could have sponsored a space mission for India.
You could run Bhubaneswar for three years
The total budget for Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, in the financial year 2023-24 was Rs 690 crore, according to news reports.
So, you could have sponsored three Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation budgets if you had the kind of money Adani is accused of paying as bribe.
You could redevelop two Narendra Modi Stadiums
The Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad was earlier known as Motera stadium. In 2015, they demolished the 32-year-old 49,000 seater stadium to construct the Modi stadium, which has a seating capacity of 1,10,000. The renovation and construction of the new stadium, which has two bowling ends, the Reliance and Adani Ends, cost Rs 800 crore.
This alleged bribe money could have redeveloped over two Narendra Modi stadiums.
You could fund CBI for two years
The Union government allocated Rs 951.46 crore to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the financial year 2024-25.
The alleged bribe money is enough to run the CBI – which is tasked with critical investigations, from the rape-murder of the trainee doctor at Calcutta’s RG Kar to various scams, and has over 5,000 employees – for two years.
Or you could just give it to the BJP
The Congress party reportedly alleged in March 2024 that 38 corporate groups who had donated electoral bonds worth Rs 2,004 crore – almost the amount that Adani is accused of bribing officials to get contracts – to the BJP for election had bagged “government projects and contracts worth an estimated Rs 3.8 lakh crore”.
