Cabinet Office discloses briefings shedding light on former PM’s meetings with billionaire Adani boss during alleged bribery scheme

  • Disclosure of briefings for Boris Johnson’s meetings with Gautam Adani at Science Museum and Adani HQ sought at First-Tier Information Tribunal
  • Cabinet Office makes unprecedented release of documents ahead of Hearing which shed light on lobbying meetings between Adani and former PM at time Adani allegedly paid bribes to officials in India
  • Campaigner’s 50-page witness statement set out public interest in government documents by highlighting Adani’s environmental and human rights impacts
  • Adani’s ambitions in arms industry revealed as billionaire boss told then Prime Minister he wanted conglomerate to become the ‘BAE of India’

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The documents are available to view here.  

Cabinet Office documents made public today shed light on how the billionaire Chair of the Adani Group lobbied the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and leveraged its sponsorship of the Science Museum, while mounting an alleged $265m bribery scheme in India. 

The Cabinet Office made the unprecedented move of disclosing internal briefing documents just days before a First Tier Information Tribunal this week was due to consider whether documents should have been made public following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted over two years ago by the campaigns and research organisation, Culture Unstained. 

The disclosed documents relate to then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s meetings with Adani Group Chair Gautam Adani, both at the Science Museum on the day its sponsorship of a new energy gallery was announced and at Adani’s HQ in India, where they discussed topics including partnering on defence and developing closer ties on renewable energy. 

The disclosed documents reveal how:

  • After signing a £4 million multi-year agreement to sponsor the Science Museum’s new climate and energy gallery, Gautam Adani was accompanied by the museum’s Director and Chair to a meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson as part of the government’s ‘Global Investment Summit’, hosted at the museum that day; 

  • In a briefing for the meeting, it notes that Adani’s ‘natural resources business remains a challenge’, in what appears to be a reference to Adani’s position as the world’s largest private producer of coal. During the meeting, they discussed strategically important topics, including plans to list an Adani entity on the London Stock Exchange, building a European Adani HQ in the UK, and seeking to secure a platform at the COP26 Climate Summit just a few weeks later.

  • The meeting at the Science Museum took place on 19 October 2021, during the period in which it is alleged that Gautam Adani was personally involved in paying bribes to Indian officials in order to secure lucrative renewable energy contracts.

  • The following year, Boris Johnson attended a meeting at Adani’s HQ attended by ‘Adani’s family members and senior associates and the Chief Minister of Gujarat’, with then Prime Minister Boris Johnson noting how, ‘Given the breadth of the renewables sector in the UK, he thought that there were numerous opportunities for collaboration’.
  • During the meeting, Johnson and Adani also spoke about a ‘desire for partnership’ on arms and defence projects, such as the Future Combat Air System and naval propulsion, with Gautam Adani saying his aim was to produce a ‘BAE of India’  and speaking of aspirations to meet with the Defence Secretary.

It comes as energy secretary Ed Miliband visited India this week to review progress made in the energy sectors of both nations including power and renewable energy, and as opposition to Adani Green Energy’s sponsorship of the Science Museum grows after the firm became the focus of an indictment by US prosecutors alleging that its executives had mounted bribery and fraud on a colossal scale. 

Previous FOI disclosures made to Culture Unstained have also revealed that in pursuing the Adani deal, Science Museum Director Ian Blatchford had pitched the sponsorship to Gautam Adani as a “global profiling opportunity”, a clear indication that such arrangements are transactional in nature, and intended to enhance the sponsor’s reputation and benefit it financially.

Despite the Cabinet Office making the disclosure, Culture Unstained, represented by Oliver Jackson of 11KBW, instructed by Paul Taylor of Richard Buxton Solicitors, went ahead with its Appeal to the Information Tribunal earlier this week in order to contest a series of redactions made to the documents by the Cabinet Office, with a ruling to be confirmed at a later date. During the Hearing proceedings, the Cabinet Office confirmed that in addition to the five documents it had disclosed, it had also identified over 1,500 Adani-related records on a civil service email archive which could fall within the scope of the Culture Unstained’s original FOI request but which had not been reviewed by the Cabinet Office.

Chris Garrard, Co-director of Culture Unstained, has said:

“It’s now clear that while Gautam Adani was allegedly paying bribes to secure lucrative renewable energy contracts in India, he was at the same time lobbying then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a bid to partner with the UK on renewable energy projects here. With huge controversy surrounding Adani – from the destructive impacts of its vast coal mining and weapons business to allegations of corruption – it’s abundantly clear that the Science Museum should not be opening doors for Adani to meet senior politicians nor cleaning up its reputation.”

As part of the Appeal process, Culture Unstained compiled and submitted a 50-page Witness Statement to the Information Tribunal outlining the extent of Adani Group’s involvement in coal production, coal power and their climate impacts, the opposition of Indigenous communities to those projects, as well a range of longstanding and well-documented concerns around corruption and fraud relating to the Adani Group.

The disclosed documents also highlight Gautam Adani’s ambitions to expand the conglomerate’s involvement in weapons and defence in order to become the ‘BAE [Systems] of India’. The Adani Group already partners with the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems on the production of drones, including the Hermes 900 drone which has been used in the genocide in Palestine .

A representative from Parents for Palestine, a grassroots collective of parents and caretakers calling for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, has said:

“Adani Green Energy is not a separate entity when it comes to ethical accountability. Adani Group’s extensive arms dealings and investments in military infrastructure directly implicate all its subsidiaries. By presenting Adani in a positive and ‘green’ light to the UK Prime Minister, who then went on to discuss with Adani its ambition in weapons to become the “BAE of India”, the Science Museum cannot claim neutrality—it is complicit in the actions of its sponsor’s parent company.”

Science Museum Director Ian Blatchford forged ahead with the partnership with Adani over the course of 2020-21 despite the museum’s own Due Diligence report on the company identifying a catalogue of concerns about criminal investigations, corruption litigation, environmental issues, cronyism and human rights abuses surrounding Adani, and in the face of significant opposition including the resignation of two of the Museum trustees, Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Jo Foster. 

Subsequently, climate scientist Professor Chris Rapley and former Director of the Science Museum, resigned from its Advisory Group. Separately, young people, scientists, Indigenous leaders and educators have called on the museum to drop Adani.

Lotika Singha, from International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India, has said:

It is deeply troubling to see how the Science Museum, a significantly publicly funded educational institution, continues to greenwash Adani, a company steeped in human rights abuses and environmental destruction. Adani is infamous among the many marginalised communities in India, who have been or are at risk of being displaced, dispossessed and exploited by the group’s various projects – from coalmining to ‘renewable’ energy, from airports and seaports to weapons and surveillance.

Culture Unstained were represented in the Tribunal by Oliver Jackson of 11KBW, instructed by Richard Buxton Solicitors, all working pro bono.

The full witness statements can be read here

‘First Witness Statement of Dr Chris Garrard’, covering:

  1. the FOI request in the Appeal
  2. the UK’s relations with India
  3. Gautam Adani and the Adani Group
  4. The Adani Group’s Fossil Fuel Activities
  5. Corruption and the Hindenburg Group Report
  6. Corporate Sponsorship of Museums
  7. Opposition to ‘Artwashing’
  8. Controversy in the Science Museum Group’s Funding

‘Second Witness Statement of Dr Chris Garrard’, covering evidence from the Indictment by US prosecutors which highlight how at the time of the meetings, Adani allegedly engaged in a large scale bribery scheme to secure lucrative renewable energy contracts in India.

Released documents

Three documents relate to Boris Johnson’s meeting with Gautam Adani at the Science Museum in London, during the UK’s Global Investment Summit in October 2021 –  on the same day Adani’s sponsorship of a new ‘Energy Revolution’ gallery was announced. 

Two further documents relate to Boris Johnson’s April 2022 visit to India, made at the invitation of Prime Minister Modi, during which Johnson visited the Adani headquarters in Gujarat. 

US Indictment

In November 2024 Gautam Adani was indicted by a US Court, with an arrest warrant issued for Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani, Executive Director of Adani Green Energy. According to filings by US prosecutors, at the time of Boris Johnson’s meetings with Adani, Gautam Adani and other executives were in the midst of enacting a $265 million bribery scheme in a bid to secure lucrative renewable energy contracts, and had misled investors as to Adani’s adherence to anti-bribery practices. Gautam Adani is alleged to have personally met with an Indian official to advance the bribery scheme between September-November 2021, around the time of the Global Investment Summit, and from April 2022 was, with Sagar Adani, involved in multiple meetings in India to discuss the payment of bribes to state government officials in India.

Additional quotes

Parents for Palestine: 

“It is impossible to accept that a museum for children – dedicated to the teaching and advancement of science and innovation – takes money earned off the sale of arms used in the maiming and death of children. We stand with the many other organisations calling for an end to this blood sponsorship.”

 Lotika Singha, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India

It is deeply troubling to see how the Science Museum, with its mandate for public education and still significantly funded by taxpayers via the DCMS, continues to showcase the greenwashing of a multinational group whose involvement in human rights abuses and environmental destruction is what makes the Adani Group a household name among the many marginalised communities in India, who have been or are at risk of being displaced, dispossessed and exploited by the group’s various projects — from coalmining to ‘renewable’ energy, from airports and seaports to weapons and surveillance. The Adani Group is also implicated in the intentional assimilation through education provided in factory schools for the Adivasi children from areas where public education has not been a state priority. 

Investigative journalism in India has also revealed that present Modi-led Indian government’s changes to environmental regulations, as well as amendments to legislations to weaken the right of consent of Indigenous peoples prior to project approval, have been done to accommodate oligarchic corporate interests such as the Adani Group’s expansion of its coal mining and greenwashing renewable energy programmes. 

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