Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Investigations Dataset

Investigation Name: Investigation into Azure Power Global's Activities in Undisclosed Countries

Trend:

Type of investigation: Internal, SEC, DOJ

Other Agencies Investigating/Assisting with SEC/DOJ Investigation: Unknown

Whistleblower: Yes

Summary

Azure Power Global Ltd. is a utility scale renewable energy project developer and operator in India. Its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker AZRE.

In its 6-K filed on January 25, 2023, Azure Power disclosed that the company had received a whistleblower complaint in May 2022 that alleged health and safety lapses, procedural irregularities, misconduct by certain employees, improper payments and false statements relating to one of the company's projects belonging to a project subsidiary. Following extensive investigation by the Ethics Committee, supervised by the Board’s Audit and Risk Committee and by external counsel and forensic professionals, Azure Power identified evidence of manipulation and misrepresentation of project data by some employees at that project site. Weak controls over payments to a vendor and failures to provide accurate information both internally and externally were found, but no direct evidence that any improper payment was made to any government official was identified.

The filing continued that In September 2022, the company received an additional whistleblower complaint containing similar allegations of misconduct as the May 2022 complaint, as well as allegations of other misconduct. The company again initiated an internal investigation, which identified significant control issues in the process of acquiring land and land use rights in relation to one of its projects. The investigation concluded that third party land aggregators may have been involved in improper payments but no improper transfer of money by the company was identified.

As part of its investigations of the May 2022 and September 2022 whistleblower complaints, Azure Power said it had also widened its internal investigation to include a review of projects commissioned in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 to ensure that similar weaknesses were not present.

Azure Power stated that the company had initiated certain remedial measures and had reported the findings of its investigations to the SEC and DOJ. It said it was cooperating with both agencies.

On April 3, 2024, Azure filed a Form 15 suspending its reporting obligations with the SEC.

On November 20, 2024, the DOJ and SEC announced enforcement actions against executives at Azure Power.

On November 21, 2024, the company issued a press release acknowledging the enforcement actions and saying that it was still cooperating with the DOJ and SEC. Azure Power further stated that it would not be commenting further. Thus, it appears that the investigation into the company remains open. However, since Azure Power no longer files with the SEC, it is unclear whether it will continue to make any public disclosures about the investigation.

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| Investigations Dataset

Investigations Dataset

Information & Summary

Investigation into Azure Power Global's Activities in Undisclosed Countries

Information & Summary

Protected Content