Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani have been cleared of criminal charges in the United States after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) moved to permanently dismiss a securities and wire fraud case filed in New York.
With this, multiple US regulatory and legal investigations involving the group have all closed in the last couple of days.
The dismissal comes days after Adani Green Energy Limited said the two had agreed to filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a combined USD 18 million in penalties, without admitting or denying the allegations.
According to an exchange filing by Adani Green Energy, Gautam Adani agreed to pay USD 6 million, while Sagar Adani will pay USD 12 million.
“Mr. Gautam Adani and Mr. Sagar Adani have consented to inter alia entry of the final judgment without admitting or denying the allegations made in the civil complaint and payment of a civil penalty of USD 6.00 million and USD 12.00 million respectively,” the company said.
In a filing before the court, the DOJ sought dismissal of the criminal indictment against the Adanis and others with prejudice, effectively ending the case and barring it from being reopened.
“The Department of Justice has reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants,” the filing said.
The closure marks a dramatic turn in a case that had threatened to disrupt the Adani Group’s global expansion plans.
The DOJ and SEC cases, filed in late 2024, had alleged that the Adanis orchestrated a USD 265 million bribery scheme involving Indian officials to secure solar power contracts and concealed the arrangement from US investors and lenders while raising capital.
The SEC had alleged that the misconduct was concealed when Adani Green Energy raised USD 750 million through a bond offering in September 2021, including around USD 175 million from US investors.
According to the regulator, the bond documents contained materially false or misleading statements regarding the company’s anti-corruption and anti-bribery controls.
The court ordered that the indictment against Adani and others “be dismissed with prejudice”.
Such dismissals are uncommon in US criminal proceedings and typically reflect a determination that pursuing the case is no longer warranted after extensive review.
Meanwhile, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Monday announced a $275 million settlement with Adani Enterprises Limited over what it described as “apparent violations of OFAC sanctions on Iran.”
The US sanctions watchdog said Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of Gautam Adani’s conglomerate, agreed to settle its potential civil liability for 32 apparent violations involving purchases of Iranian-origin liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).