The US Justice Department on Monday moved to drop its criminal fraud case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, ending a years-long prosecution over an alleged $250 million bribery scheme tied to a major Indian solar contract.
In a short filing to the federal court in the Eastern District of New York, prosecutors said the department “has reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants.” Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis must still approve the dismissal.
The move was widely anticipated after the Trump administration suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act last year — the statute the DOJ relied on to file charges against Adani in 2024.
The dismissal lands on the same day the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control settled a separate civil case with Adani Enterprises Limited for $275 million over violations of Iran sanctions. Days earlier, the Securities and Exchange Commission also resolved its parallel civil fraud lawsuit, with Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani agreeing to pay $18 million without admitting wrongdoing.
The clearance of the criminal docket removes the most serious legal cloud over the Adani Group’s overseas expansion. For Sri Lanka, the group’s commercial footprint includes a 51% stake in Colombo West International Terminal, the $700 million deep-water container facility at the Port of Colombo.
The DOJ decision is the latest in a series of US enforcement walk-backs since the FCPA pause and comes alongside reports that the US has agreed to release a portion of Iran’s frozen foreign assets as part of a Pakistan-brokered peace proposal.
Sources: Newswire
