U.S. to drop graft charges against Gautam Adani: NY Times
Now here's a story with layers. The New York Times reports that US federal prosecutors are set to drop charges against Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani. He was indicted in November 2024 for allegedly paying over $250 million in bribes to Indian officials for solar energy contracts. What's the context? Adani's lawyer reportedly offered a $10 billion US investment commitment. This is happening during a broader recalibration of India-US relations. For CLAT, this touches on India-US economic relations, corporate governance, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bottom line: the case shows how geopolitics, trade deals, and corporate law can intersect at the highest levels of international relations.
Federal prosecutors in New York on November 21, 2024 indicted Adani Group Chairman Gautam S. Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and six others on multiple counts of fraud. File
U.S. prosecutors are set to drop charges against billionaire Gautam Adani, who wasaccused of paying hundreds of millions of dollars of bribesand hiding the payments,The New York Timesreported Thursday (May 14, 2026).
With a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media, the chairman of Adani Group has been rocked in recent years by corporate fraud allegations and a stock crash.
A close acolyte ofPrime Minister Narendra Modi, he was alleged in November 2024 to have agreed to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.
The Timessaid the move to abandon the charges, brought under U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, came after Adani hired new lawyers led by Robert Giuffra, one of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.
The Timesreported that at a meeting between defence and prosecution at the Department of Justice in April, Giuffra presented slides, including one that said that if prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs.
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Prosecutors previously detailed how one of Mr. Adani’s alleged accomplices meticulously tracked payments, using his phone to log the bribes offered to officials.
The Department of Justice did not respond to anAFPcall for comment.