US Department of Justice to drop all charges against Gautam Adani; case permanently closed

The US Department of Justice has permanently dropped all criminal charges against Indian tycoon Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar, effectively closing the New York wire fraud case after prosecutors concluded they could not take the charges.

As a result, several US regulatory and legal investigations into the group have been closed in the past few days.

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settled civil charges against the two men in connection with investor disclosures related to solar energy projects in India. Court filings showed that Gautam Adani agreed to pay $6 million and Sagar Adani $12 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Then the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) psettled the Adani Group’s allegations of violating US sanctions against Iran by importing LPG. It followed the Indian conglomerate agreeing to pay $275 million while extending “extensive cooperation” in the investigation and “proactive” disclosure.

Now, US prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York have dropped all charges against Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani.

In a court filing, the U.S. Department of Justice asked that the indictment against the Adanis be dismissed with prejudice.

“The Department of Justice has reviewed this case and has decided, based on the prosecutor’s discretion, not to commit additional resources to these criminal charges against the individual defendants,” it said.

The court then ordered that the indictment against Adani and others “be dismissed with prejudice.”

The closure marks a dramatic turnaround in a case that threatened to derail Adani Group’s global expansion plans. The SEC and DOJ cases, filed in late 2024, alleged that Adanis orchestrated a $265 million bribery scheme involving Indian officials to secure solar power contracts and concealed the arrangements from US investors and lenders while raising capital.

The dismissal was “with prejudice,” preventing the case from being reopened.

Such dismissals are unusual in US criminal proceedings and usually reflect a decision that, after extensive review, further prosecution of the case is no longer warranted.

The case turned in Adani’s favor after prosecutors found no clear U.S. ties and insufficient evidence to support the charges, according to people familiar with the matter.

The expected decision follows months of aggressive confrontation between US prosecutors and a formidable legal team assembled by Adanis.

Five U.S. counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell, along with Nixon Peabody, Hecker Fink, Norton Rose Fulbright and Bracewell, made a series of submissions and presentations to the U.S. authorities as part of the review process. The review failed to produce findings that could lead to charges against Gautam and Sagar Adani, prompting the Justice Department to dismiss them.

In filings published on April 7, 2026 before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Adani’s attorneys strongly challenged the US SEC’s fraud proceedings, calling them an “impermissible extraterritorial application” of US securities laws. The defense argued that the case involved “Indian defendants, an Indian issuer”, securities not traded on US exchanges and alleged conduct “exclusively in India”.

The filings said the SEC “lacked the requisite jurisdiction,” found no actionable wrongdoing and could not bind any defendants to the bond offering. The lawyers argued that the SEC had “recast” unviable allegations of bribery into claims of securities fraud. The filing said there had been “no investor losses”, all bond obligations had been met and Gautam Adani had “not authorized the issuance of the bonds”.

The case has faced growing scrutiny from legal experts over whether prosecutors have stretched securities laws to pursue behavior concentrated overseas.

Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain were charged only under the Securities and Wire Fraud Acts (Counts 2, 3 and 4). They were not named in the more serious bribery or obstruction-related charges (counts 1 and 5) that prosecutors brought against other defendants in the broader case.

The Adani Group has consistently dismissed the allegations as unfounded, defending its governance and compliance standards while vowing to challenge the proceedings through legal channels.

This difference, along with no US ties, increasingly shaped criticism of the government’s legal approach. Former SEC Commissioner Laura Unger argued that authorities had effectively tried to present a securities fraud case based on bribery charges that had neither been tried nor formally prosecuted in India.

Published – 18 May 2026 22:38 IST