On May 18, 2026, the Justice Department moved to dismiss its criminal fraud and bribery case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, one of the world's richest people. Adani had been charged in the Eastern District of New York with a scheme to pay as much as $265 million in bribes to Indian officials to win solar-energy contracts, and with lying to U.S. investors about it.
The case was dropped after Adani added Robert J. Giuffra Jr. to his legal team, and Giuffra announced that Adani would invest $10 billion in the United States, which he said would create 15,000 jobs. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, the DOJ said it had “decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges.” The judge must still approve the dismissal.
Two related settlements landed the same period: the SEC agreed to resolve its civil suit, with Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani to pay $6 million and $12 million in penalties (pending court approval), and the Treasury Department announced a separate $275 million settlement with an Adani entity over alleged Iran-sanctions violations. Dropping a major foreign-bribery prosecution after the defendant pledged a large U.S. investment fits a documented second-term pattern of trading enforcement decisions for promises of money and jobs.