DOJ moved to drop foreign-bribery and fraud charges against Gautam Adani after his $10 billion U.S. investment pledge

On May 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to dismiss the criminal fraud and foreign-bribery charges pending against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, asking U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York to drop the case. In its filing the department said it had reviewed the matter and decided, "in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants," offering no factual basis for reversing the prosecution.

The indictment, brought under the Biden administration, had accused Adani and associates of a scheme to bribe Indian officials to secure solar-energy contracts while raising more than $3 billion from U.S. and international investors, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The dismissal followed Adani's public pledge of a $10 billion investment in the United States — which he said he could not proceed with "while the cases proceeded" — and his addition of Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump's personal attorneys, to his legal team. The reversal is consistent with the administration's broader 2025 pause on FCPA enforcement.

Updates

2026-05-19 — Adani resolved parallel Treasury and SEC claims [1, 2]

Alongside the criminal dismissal, Adani entities settled a $275 million U.S. Treasury claim over sanctions violations tied to Iranian-origin fuel, and Gautam and Sagar Adani agreed to pay civil penalties of $6 million and $12 million, respectively, to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

2026-06-26 — Judge deferred ruling and demanded a fuller DOJ justification [5]

Judge Garaufis declined to immediately dismiss the case, calling the department's stated rationale "terse, bland and conclusory" and ordering prosecutors to submit a more detailed justification by July 13, 2026.

2026-07-07 — DOJ publicly defended dropping the case amid Senate scrutiny [3, 4]

After Democratic senators questioned the decision and demanded records, the Justice Department publicly defended its move to dismiss the charges, maintaining the dismissal was a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

2026-07-09 — Judge ordered Adani to disclose whether any quid pro quo existed [6]

In a formal written order prompted by a DOJ filing referencing Adani's investment pledge, Garaufis directed Adani to state by July 15 whether any "agreement exchanging anything for the dismissal of the Indictment" existed, saying the filing "raises — for the first time — the specter of a possible agreement."

2026-08-10 — Judge dismissed most charges but rebuked DOJ's handling as "highly unusual" [7, 8]

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis granted the bulk of DOJ's motion to dismiss the case in a 47-page ruling, though he declined to dismiss two of the charges, finding the department had not provided a sufficient basis for dropping them. Garaufis called it "highly unusual" that Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general, made the dismissal decision largely in collaboration with Adani's defense counsel and apparently without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the case or the DOJ, SEC, and U.S. Attorney's Office attorneys who originally brought it.