Τhe Adani Affair

Brothers Gautam and Vinod Adani took their family conglomerate to the pinnacle of indian capitalism. Then their companies lost $100 billion in 14 days as massive fraud claims rocked their empire. The inside story of two ambitious siblings who built their fortunes using shady deals, hidden offshore entities and alleged stock manipulation and why they may be too big (and too politically connected) to fail

- By John Hyatt and Giacomo Tognini

"A democracy whose time has come cannot be stopped, and India's time has arrived," Gautam Adani proclaimed to the 450 executives convened at Forbes' Global CEO conference in Singapore last September. "I sincerely believe this can only be good news for the global order India as an economically successful democracy that leads by example."

At the time, it certainly seemed not only that India's time had arrived, but that Adani's had too. The 60-year-old Indian industrialist was on top of the world: Shares in the nine publicly traded companies that then made up his Adani Group were on a tear; four had doubled or more in value in just 12 months. Recently Adani had added more to his fortune than any billionaire on the planet, with his net worth jumping nearly $70 billion in six months to hit $158 billion, enough to make him briefly Earth's second-richest person, worth more than Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Jeff Bezos.

And he was doing it by building a better India. The world's second-most-populous country desperately needs better roads, more modern airports and advanced power plants and Adani was providing it all. His publicly traded companies-seven of which now bear the family name-generated $38 billion in revenue last year and employ more than 26,000 people. The group's sprawling assets include India's busiest shipping port, nine power stations, transmission lines that serve over 3 million distribution customers, coal mines, cooking oils, highways and eight airports. Last year, the Adani Group completed deals that made it India's second biggest cement producer and the owner of New Delhi Television Ltd., one of the country's largest TV networks.