Can Indian billionaire Gautam Adani be tried in the US for India ‘crimes’?

The recent allegations by US prosecutors highlight jurisdictional complexities of charging a person living in another country with an alleged crime committed there.

It is a tumultuous time for Gautam Adani, the billionaire chairman of one of India’s biggest corporate conglomerates, the Adani Group, and one of the richest people in the world.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Adani and others of conspiring to pay about $265m in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain contracts and develop India’s largest solar power plant project.

US prosecutors unveiled in November an indictment of Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and five others. The Adani Group has rejected these claims, calling them baseless.

Amid all this, Adani remains defiant. “This is not the first time we have faced such challenges … every attack makes us stronger and every obstacle becomes a stepping stone,” Adani said on Sunday at an award ceremony he was attending in the western Indian city of Jaipur, his first public appearance after the indictment.

A grand jury indictment means that an empanelled jury, and a judge, are convinced that there is enough evidence to merit a continuing investigation and to potentially move ahead to trial, Irfan Nooruddin, an authority on US SEC corruption cases, told Indian outlet The Print. However, the bar for a grand jury indictment is lower than the bar for a jury trial, he added.

The recent allegations also highlight jurisdictional complexities.

Indian senior criminal lawyer Vikas Pahwa told Al Jazeera, “The Prevention of Corruption Act [PCA] mandates investigations into bribery involving Indian officials be conducted by Indian authorities like the CBI [Central Bureau of