NEW DELHI/ NEW YORK: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has permanently dropped all criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani, bringing the high-profile securities and wire fraud case in New York to a complete close after prosecutors concluded they could not sustain the allegations.
With this, multiple US regulatory and legal investigations involving the Adani Group have been resolved over the past few days.
Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled civil allegations against Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani related to disclosures made to investors in connection with solar energy projects in India.
Court filings showed Gautam Adani agreed to pay USD 6 million and Sagar Adani USD 12 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing.
Separately, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) settled allegations involving the Adani Group’s LPG imports linked to Iran sanctions violations.
The conglomerate agreed to pay USD 275 million while extending “extensive cooperation” with the investigation and making “proactive” disclosures.
The latest development came after prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York moved to drop all charges against Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani.
In a filing before the court, the DOJ requested dismissal of the indictment against the Adanis “with prejudice”.
“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 stated.
The court subsequently ordered that the indictment against Adani and others “be dismissed with prejudice”.
The dismissal means the case cannot be reopened.
The closure marks a dramatic turn in a case that had threatened to disrupt the Adani Group’s global expansion plans.
The SEC and DOJ 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.
According to people familiar with the matter, the case turned in Adani’s favour after prosecutors found no clear US linkages and insufficient evidence to sustain the allegations.
The decision followed months of legal engagement between US prosecutors and a team of American law firms representing the Adanis, including Sullivan & Cromwell, Nixon Peabody, Hecker Fink, Norton Rose Fulbright and Bracewell.
The legal teams made a series of submissions and presentations to US authorities during the review process.
In submissions filed before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York on April 7, 2026, Adani’s lawyers challenged the SEC’s fraud proceedings, calling them an “impermissibly extraterritorial application” of US securities laws.
The defence argued the case involved “Indian defendants, an Indian issuer”, securities not traded on US exchanges and alleged conduct occurring “exclusively in India”.
The filings stated the SEC “lacked necessary jurisdiction”, failed to establish actionable misstatements and could not directly link either defendant to the bond offering.
The lawyers also argued that the SEC had “recast” unviable anti-bribery allegations into securities fraud claims.
According to the submissions, there were “no investor losses”, all bond obligations had been honoured and Gautam Adani “did not authorise the issuance of the bonds”.
The case had faced growing scrutiny from legal experts over whether US authorities had stretched securities laws to pursue conduct centred outside the United States.
Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain were charged only under securities and wire fraud statutes.
They were not named in the more serious Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery charge or obstruction-related count brought against other defendants in the wider case.
The Adani Group consistently rejected the allegations, defending its governance and compliance standards while pledging to contest the proceedings through legal channels.
Former SEC commissioner Laura Unger had argued that authorities effectively attempted to build a securities fraud case around bribery allegations that had neither been adjudicated nor formally pursued in India.
