Washington: The New York federal court has ordered the dismissal of all criminal cases filed in the United States against Indian industrialist Gautam Adani, his relative Sagar Adani, and associate Vineet Jain.
Acting on a request from the U.S. Department of Justice, District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered the criminal cases against Adani to be dismissed.
With this, all allegations against the Adani Group related to stock market fraud and money laundering have been completely dropped. The court has made it clear that these same cases cannot be tried again.
At the same time, it has also been reported that Adani has agreed to settle the ongoing civil case filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by paying a fine of 18 million dollars (about Rs. 171 crore) without admitting any wrongdoing.
In November 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an indictment against the Adani Group, alleging that it paid around 265 million dollars in bribes to secure solar power contracts in India and raised funds by misleading American investors and concealing related details from them.
In this long-running case, the U.S. Department of Justice announced last May that it was dropping the actions against Adani. U.S. Justice Department official Trent McCotter said that most of the case fell within Indian jurisdiction and that the case was being dropped to focus on domestic matters.
However, criticism arose that the case was dismissed because the Adani Group had come forward with a plan to invest $10 billion in the United States. It is noteworthy that Adani’s side filed an affidavit in court stating that there was no connection between the U.S. investment promise and the dropping of the case.
