The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is moving to drop fraud charges against India's second richest man, Gautam Adani, in connection with an alleged $265 million fraud and bribery case.
This crucial decision came after a lawyer for the billionaire—Robert J. Giuffra, who has been one of US President Donald Trump’s own attorneys—reportedly made an unusual offer to the DOJ in an April meeting before the DOJ announced it could be dropping charges against him in a week's time.
Adani's counsel had allegedly promised to invest $10 billion in the US economy and create 15,000 jobs if the charges were dropped, a New York Times report said.
This is said to be a major win for the Adani Group chairman, which comes more than a year after US prosecutors in New York accused him and other company officials of orchestrating a multibillion-dollar corruption network linked with India’s largest solar power project.
This comes amid the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also moving to settle a parallel civil fraud case it had levelled against Adani and others in November 2024, some of the people said.
However, while the DOJ could effectively move to drop the charges even with the defendants out of the country, resolving the SEC case may involve a monetary penalty, a Bloomberg report said, citing officials in the know.
What were the charges?
In November 2024, the US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn alleged in a five-count indictment that Adani and other defendants had been linked to a $250 million bribery scheme in India aimed at securing solar energy supply contracts.
The Adani Group has repeatedly denied the charges. None of the defendants, including Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani, have appeared in court so far over the charges, due to which the case had been effectively stalled.
The Justice Department had alleged in its case that the defendants' alleged fraud to win solar energy contracts had been concealed, as they sought to raise money from US investors.
However, the parallel SEC case—which made similar allegations of the defendants using millions of dollars to lure Indian officials into contracts for Adani Green to develop India's largest solar power plant project—had begun to advance in court.
In fact, earlier this year, Adani’s lawyers had even filed papers arguing that the SEC’s fraud case should be dismissed because its regulators lacked the necessary jurisdiction over the two men, and that the allegations they had made against the defendants were not actionable.