Do we like Gautam Adani?
Our score: 4 out of 10. No anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-women words turned up, but coal is his big business and a $265 million bribery allegation ended in settlements, not a clear acquittal.
Adani is the Indian tycoon who turned a trading business into a ports, power and energy empire. He's one of the richest people in Asia, and nearly every story about him comes back to two things: coal, and his closeness to political power. The record I could actually open is thin on his early years, so this column sticks to what's on the page.
The big stoush was in November 2024, when US prosecutors in Brooklyn indicted him. They alleged he and others agreed to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials to win solar contracts, and that investors were misled while the group raised money. The group denied the allegations, and Kenya's president responded by cancelling more than $2.5 billion in Adani deals.
Then the case fizzled. In May 2026 Gautam and his nephew agreed to pay $6 million and $12 million to resolve the SEC's civil case, and prosecutors asked to drop the criminal one. Judge Nicholas Garaufis approved that in August, but not before criticising how the Justice Department went about it, and asking about a reported $10 billion US investment pledge. He concluded it didn't factor into prosecutors' thinking. Adani said he welcomed the decision “with humility and deep respect”.
Earlier, India's market regulator SEBI cleared the group in September 2025 of the Hindenburg Research allegations of market manipulation. It found them unsubstantiated, and the group has always denied them. So the honest read is: serious allegations, no finding of guilt, and a lot of people still uneasy about how it all ended.
On the harm test, I found no words from him against LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, and no slide into conspiracy theories. The planet is the sore spot. He defended the Carmichael coal mine in Australia in 2019, saying renewables “can't meet our baseload power needs”, while critics argued the mine wouldn't make financial sense.
The good stuff is real money. In 2022, for his 60th birthday and his father's centenary, he and his family pledged about $7.7 billion to health, education and skills through the Adani Foundation. I couldn't find reporting on how much has actually been paid out, so call that a pledge, not a track record.