New York — The US government agreed to settle the lawsuit against Ahad The richest people in the world He is accused of deceiving investors by concealing that his company’s massive solar project in India was facilitated through an alleged bribery scheme, according to court filings published Thursday.
In the lawsuit filed in late 2024, the SEC accused Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani — both leaders of the energy company Adani Green Energy Ltd. — of promising to pay the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to Indian government officials in exchange for government contracts to buy energy at inflated prices.
At the same time, the company received several billion dollars from Wall Street investors who allegedly assured that the company had a strong anti-bribery compliance program and obtained promises from senior management that no bribery would occur.
The SEC said at the time that these actions violated the anti-fraud provisions of U.S. securities laws.
Court documents show that Gautam Adani agreed to pay civil penalties of $6 million while his nephew agreed to pay $12 million. The proposed settlement does not include an admission of guilt.
Adani Group denied the allegations at the time, calling them baseless. Messages left with Adanis’ attorneys were not returned Thursday.
Both men were indicted in late 2024 in New York on charges of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The New York Times and Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the charges would likely be dropped. Messages left by The Associated Press with prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York were not returned.
The move to drop the charges appears to have been foreshadowed by the events that followed President Donald Trump’s election to a second term and Gautam Adani lavishing praise on him.
In March 2025, Trump suspended work Foreign Corrupt Practices Acta law prohibiting bribery to overseas businessmen, raised expectations among some in India that the Adanis family’s case had been fatally damaged.
Gautam Adani became a power broker in the world’s most populous country by building a fortune in coal trading in the 1990s.
Over time, the Adani Group has embraced a diversified portfolio, investing in key industries such as renewable energy, defense and agriculture.
With its motto of “Growing with Good”, the company soon had a clean energy portfolio exceeding 20 GW, including one of the world’s largest solar power plants in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The Adani Group once set a target to become the country’s largest player in this space by 2030 with plans to invest $70 billion in clean energy projects by 2032.
Adani’s close ties with the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have at times drawn criticism, as Hindenburg Research, a short-selling firm, has said. US-based financial research company, Adani and his company were accused of “brazen stock manipulation” and “accounting fraud”.
The Adani Group described the allegations as a “malicious mix of selective misinformation and baseless and discredited claims”.
After the Brooklyn case was announced, the Kenyan president canceled multi-million dollar deals with the Adani Group to modernize airports and energy projects. Adani Green Energy has withdrawn its wind power projects from Sri Lanka after the island nation sought to renegotiate prices. A French oil giant also temporarily halted new investments.
Analysts say a key factor in Adani’s meteoric rise over the years has been his skill in aligning his group’s priorities with those of the Modi government. His critics accuse him of crony capitalism and receiving preferential treatment from the government, including winning contracts, which the Adani Group has denied.