U.S. prosecutors on Monday asked a Brooklyn federal judge to dismiss the criminal fraud and conspiracy charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, ending an 18-month case tied to a $2 billion solar contract in India, hours after the Treasury Department announced a separate $275 million settlement with Adani Enterprises over the purchase of sanctioned Iranian fuel.

The twin moves close out the most serious U.S. legal exposure faced by one of the world's richest men and the Adani Group's sprawling ports, power and infrastructure empire, and clear a path for the conglomerate to return to international debt and equity markets. The group carried about 2.78 trillion rupees, or roughly $32 billion, in net debt as of September, with global banks and capital markets supplying 41 percent of that financing, according to company data cited by CNBC.

The court filing

The Justice Department filed its dismissal motion in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, where a grand jury in November 2024 indicted Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and six others on conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud charges. "The Department of Justice has reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants," prosecutors wrote in the filing, which bore the names of Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter and Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis must still approve the request. Lawyers for the defendants consented to the motion, prosecutors said. Adani attorney Robert Giuffra declined to comment, the Associated Press reported, as did Timothy Sini and Sean Hecker, who represent Sagar Adani.

What the case alleged

The 2024 indictment accused Adani and the other defendants of paying more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar-power supply contracts that would generate more than $2 billion in profits. Adani Green Energy Ltd. and another company had agreed to sell 12 gigawatts of solar power to the Indian government. Prosecutors said the defendants raised more than $3 billion from U.S. and international investors while misrepresenting their compliance with anti-bribery laws. The Adani Group called the allegations "baseless."

The case had been widely expected to fade after President Trump last year suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the U.S. law banning overseas business bribery under which much of the indictment was built. Adani was never arrested or brought to the United States to face trial.

According to a New York Times report cited by CNBC, Adani's legal team had told the Justice Department the billionaire was prepared to invest $10 billion in the U.S. economy and create 15,000 jobs if the criminal charges were dropped.

The Iran settlement

In a parallel action, the Treasury Department said Adani Enterprises had agreed to pay $275 million to resolve "its potential civil liability for apparent violations of OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] sanctions on Iran" tied to liquefied petroleum gas shipments purchased between November 2023 and June 2025. The supplier, a Dubai-based trader, "purported to supply Omani and Iraqi gas" while red flags pointed to Iranian origin, the agency said, adding that the "violations were egregious and not voluntarily self-disclosed."

The Securities and Exchange Commission last week separately moved to settle its related civil lawsuit against Gautam and Sagar Adani.

The view absent today

Today's source set is drawn entirely from center-tier U.S. wires and broadcasters, and does not include reaction from Indian opposition figures, U.S. lawmakers critical of the FCPA suspension, or short-seller Hindenburg Research, which in past years has accused the Adani Group of "brazen stock manipulation" and "accounting fraud." The conglomerate has called those claims "a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations." The Associated Press noted that after the 2024 indictment, Kenya canceled airport-expansion and energy deals with the conglomerate, Adani Green Energy withdrew wind projects from Sri Lanka, and a French oil major paused new investments. Whether those counterparties revisit their decisions now that the U.S. cases are closing will be an early test of the settlement's commercial reach.

Judge Garaufis has not set a date to rule on the dismissal motion.