Billionaire Adani to settle with SEC, nears end of US legal woes
Gautam Adani is on the verge of ending a series of legal threats in the US, paving the way for Asia’s richest man to step up investment and capital raising after months of battling allegations including fraud and bribery.
Adani and his nephew Sagar agreed to pay a total of $18 million to resolve Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that they made false and misleading statements about Adani Green Energy Ltd, according to a proposed settlement filed in federal court on Thursday.
The SEC alleged in a lawsuit filed in November 2024 that Adani led an effort to pay or promise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials to win contracts Adani Green needed to develop India’s largest solar farm project. The Justice Department is also moving to drop fraud charges against Gautum Adani in a parallel criminal case, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Markets welcomed the proposed solution. Most of Adani Group’s dollar bonds rose. The Adani Green Energy note, which will mature in 2042, rose by 1 cent to 98.3, its highest level since the beginning of April. The bond from Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, due in 2041, gained 0.8 cents.
The deal will be a milestone for Adani Group, one of India’s most powerful companies, whose interests include energy, airports and the data center business, which is part of a $100 billion digital infrastructure push. This will help the conglomerate pivot to international capital markets and continue its aggressive expansion strategy following allegations of market manipulation by short-seller Hindenburg Research in 2023, which Adani also denies.
“This is extremely positive for investor perception of the group,” said Abhay Agarwal, chief investment officer at Piper Serica Advisors. He said this could end the blow the conglomerate took after the Hindenberg allegations.
The SEC said Adani and his nephew falsely touted the company’s compliance with anti-bribery policies and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering. At the time, the SEC said Adani Green had raised at least $175 million from investors in the United States.
Gautam Adani, Asia’s richest person, heads the conglomerate Adani Group and Sagar Adani is the managing director of Adani Green Energy. Neither the holding company nor its corporate units were sued by the SEC. The company denied the US allegations at the time.
Under the proposed deal, Adani will pay $6 million and Sagar will pay $12 million.
The group’s dollar bonds will likely advance further, and the conglomerate, which already has strong alternative financing sources, could continue to raise funds in the dollar bond market, according to Bloomberg Intelligence credit analyst Sharon Chen.
Bloomberg News reported in February 2025 that since the lawsuits were filed, Adani had established a political influence operation in the United States that included white-shoe law firm lawyers and lobbyists.
While the Department of Justice’s case was stalled due to Adanis not being in the United States, the SEC case had begun to move forward in court.
In January, Robert Giuffra Jr., co-chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, told a federal judge that he had agreed to accept the case on behalf of Gautam Adani. Court records also showed that US-based lawyers agreed to accept formal notification of the case against Sagar Adani.
Gautam Adani’s lawyers later argued that the SEC’s fraud lawsuit should be dismissed, saying regulators did not have the necessary jurisdiction over the two men and that the alleged misrepresentations supporting the case were not actionable.
–With assistance from Ben Bain, Harry Suhartono and Chiranjivi Chakraborty.
