By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Andrew Goudsward
May 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is close to dropping criminal fraud charges against Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire who has promised to invest $10 billion in the U.S. economy, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Adani, a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday also resolved a related civil fraud lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission over an alleged scheme to bribe Indian government officials.
The possible dismissal of the criminal charges comes after Adani’s lawyer, Robert Giuffra, who is also a personal attorney of U.S. President Donald Trump, told Justice Department officials in a presentation last month that Adani could not make that investment while the case was proceeding, one of the sources said. Adani had publicly promised to invest that amount and create 15,000 jobs in the U.S. after Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.
Giuffra spent the bulk of his 100-page presentation arguing the case was weak because it didn’t have proper jurisdiction and lacked evidence, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Giuffra made a similar argument in court filings in a parallel U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission case last month.
Some prosecutors made clear that the $10 billion investment would not affect the case, one of the sources said. It’s unclear if others saw it differently.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg News first reported that the Justice Department was close to dismissing Adani’s case.
Adani also faced a related SEC civil fraud lawsuit, which the securities regulator settled on Thursday subject to court approval, court records showed.
It is the latest example of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department seeking to abandon a high-profile criminal case brought by federal prosecutors during the tenure of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
In November 2024, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Adani over an alleged scheme in which they said he agreed to pay about $265 million in bribes to Indian government officials so his company could win approval to develop India’s largest solar power plant.
Adani and his alleged co-conspirators raised more than $3 billion in loans and bonds by hiding their corruption from lenders and investors, prosecutors said.
The Adani Group has called the allegations “baseless.”
While the deal is not completed, Adani could still see significant financial damages, the people said. Adani and his nephew would share the cost of an approximately $15 million resolution with the SEC, one of the sources said, though Adani would not admit or deny any wrongdoing.
Adani’s company, the Adani Group, would also pay a $275 million settlement with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over a separate investigation involving shipping Iranian gas.
The 63-year-old Adani is worth $82 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him one of the world’s richest people.
(Additonal reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Lincoln Feast)
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