The US Department of Justice has dropped criminal fraud charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and some officials of his firm, days after he agreed to settle a separate civil case. Adani Enterprises, his group’s flagship firm, also agreed to pay $275m (£205m) to the US Treasury to settle a separate investigation into alleged violations of sanctions on Iran.
Sources told the BBC that the Adani Group has now resolved all three legal cases against it in the US. This will pave the way for Adani to travel to the US without risk of legal proceedings.
Media reports say the dropped charges reflect a broader move away from prosecuting foreign bribery cases under Donald Trump’s administration.
Adani, 63, is one of the world’s richest people, worth $82bn according to Forbes. His Adani Group is one of India’s largest business conglomerates with interests in sectors including energy, ports and airports.
The cases against him had generated a lot of attention in the US and India.
In 2024, the US justice department registered criminal fraud charges against Adani and various officials from his company for allegedly paying bribes to Indian officials for high-profile renewable energy projects and misleading US investors about it. He and his company strongly denied the allegations.
Adani Green Energy said in a filing to regulators on Monday that the US justice department had “filed a motion seeking dismissal with prejudice of the charges” against Adani, his nephew Sagar and other group officials. The BBC has seen a copy of an order issued by the US District Court in the Eastern District of New York ordering the case to be dismissed.
The move to drop the charges reportedly came after Adani hired a new team of lawyers led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, head of one of the most powerful law firms in the US and one of President Trump’s personal legal advisers.
Giuffra reportedly met last month with justice department officials to lay out concerns about the case.
The New York Times reported, citing sources, that the lawyers said Adani would invest $10bn in the US and create 15,000 jobs if prosecutors dropped the charges against him, repeating a pledge the billionaire made to Trump shortly after he won the 2024 presidential election.
Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission moved to drop fraud charges against Adani and his nephew Sagar in a separate civil case after they agreed to pay a combined settlement of $18m.
The agreement, which did not include any admission or denial of the allegations, barred the Adanis from future violations of key US anti-fraud laws covering investor deception, securities fraud and market manipulation.
Separately, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday that Adani Enterprises had agreed to settle a civil case against the firm for allegedly violating sanctions placed by the US on Iran.
In a press release, the treasury department said that from November 2023 to June 2025, Adani Enterprises purchased shipments of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) from a Dubai-based trader purporting to supply Omani and Iraqi gas which actually originated from Iran.
During this time period, this caused US financial institutions to process 32 US dollar-denominated payments totalling approximately $192m for the shipments, the statement added.
By BBC News
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
