Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar agreed to pay a total of $18 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations they made false and misleading representations about Adani Green Energy Ltd.
Gautam Adani would pay $6 million and Sagar would pay $12 million to end the SEC’s November 2024 lawsuit, under the proposed agreement filed in federal court Thursday, which still needs a judge’s approval.
If finalized, the deal could be a significant boon to the Adani Group, the multinational conglomerate whose interests range from renewable energy to airports. The Justice Department is also moving to drop fraud charges against Gautum Adani in a parallel criminal case, Bloomberg News reported earlier.
Such a move, in addition to an SEC settlement, could clear the decks for the conglomerate to return to international capital markets and resume its aggressive expansion strategy.
Also read | India’s IT industry faces talent glut as applications surge across roles
The SEC alleged that Gautam Adani spearheaded an effort to pay or promise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials to induce them to enter contracts that Adani Green needed to develop India’s largest solar power plant project. At the same time, the regulator said he and his nephew falsely touted the company’s compliance with antibribery principles and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering.
Adani Green raised at least $175 million from investors in the US, the SEC said at the time.
Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest person, chairs the Adani Group conglomerate and Sagar Adani is executive director at Adani Green Energy. Neither the conglomerate nor its corporate units was sued by the SEC. The company denied the US allegations at the time.
Bloomberg News reported in February 2025 that since the cases were filed, Adani built a political influence operation in the US that included lawyers for white-shoe law firms and lobbyists.
Also read | High costs pull India Inc's foreign borrowing down 51%
While the Justice Department prosecution had been stalled with the Adanis not in the US, the SEC case had started to advance in court.
In January, Robert Giuffra Jr., co-chair of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, told a federal judge that he reached an agreement to accept the lawsuit on Gautam Adani’s behalf. Court filings also showed that US-based lawyers agreed to accept formal notification of the lawsuit on Sagar Adani.
Gautam Adani’s lawyers then argued that the SEC’s fraud case should be dismissed, saying that regulators lacked necessary jurisdiction over the two men and that the alleged misstatements underpinning the case weren’t actionable.
