London’s Science Museum is at the moment going through recent scrutiny over certainly one of its sponsors, Adani Inexperienced Power—a subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate Adani Group—after prices had been introduced towards the group’s billionaire founder and chairman, Gautam Adani.
Based on the Monetary Occasions, Gautam Adani has been charged by US prosecutors over an alleged years-long scheme to bribe Indian officers in change for beneficial phrases on solar energy contracts that had been projected to usher in greater than $2bn in revenue. Adani was charged alongside seven others, together with executives of Adani power subsidiaries.
A Science Museum spokesperson stated: “We’re conscious of a case within the US referring to Adani Inexperienced Power and will likely be monitoring developments consistent with our due diligence processes.”
The Science Museum’s Adani Inexperienced Power Gallery, which opened in March this 12 months, highlights how renewable power might help deal with local weather change. The house is sponsored by Adani Inexperienced Power, a part of the Adani Group which has ties to coal mining and arms manufacturing.
Tradition Unstained, which campaigns towards fossil gas sponsorship within the arts, stated in a press release: “Will the Science Museum proceed to defend an organization whose chair and different senior executives have now been indicted by US prosecutors? Or will it lastly admit the error it has made and drop this indefensible, polluting sponsor?”
The Science Museum is a part of The Science Museum Group (SMG), which additionally contains the Science and Business Museum in Manchester and the Railway Museum in York. SMG’s “Group Ethics Coverage” (June 2024) reads: “The Science Museum Group is not going to settle for donations, sponsorship or grants the place the donor has acted, or believed to have acted, illegally within the acquisition of funds or the place there are issues of fraud, cash laundering or different monetary crime.”
A spokesperson for Adani Group says: “The allegations made by the US Division of Justice and the US Securities and Alternate Fee towards administrators of Adani Inexperienced are baseless and denied. As said by the US Division of Justice itself, ‘the fees within the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed harmless except and till confirmed responsible.’ All potential authorized recourse will likely be sought.
“The Adani Group has all the time upheld and is steadfastly dedicated to sustaining the very best requirements of governance, transparency and regulatory compliance throughout all jurisdictions of its operations.”
This recent controversy follows protests in April, throughout which local weather activists occupied the Science Museum over its sponsorship hyperlinks with the Adani Group, tenting out within the Adani Inexperienced Power Gallery. The campaigners described Adani’s sponsorship of the gallery as permitting the model to “greenwash” its enterprise, which derives 60% of its revenues from coal—probably the most polluting fossil fuels.
