Billionaire Gautam Adani has agreed to pay $6 million to settle the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s charges against him in the solar contracts bribery case, according to a Bloomberg report. The proposed settlement reportedly also involves an agreement from his nephew Sagar Adani, to pay another $12 million.
Adani reiterated his past promise to invest $10 billion in the US and create 15,000 jobs, if the US Department of Justice drops the criminal charges against him, New York Times reported. Adani made the promise when Trump’s election victory was announced in 2024.
Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and others were indicted by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) in November 2024 on various charges, alleging that the defendants paid bribes totalling Rs 2,029 crore to secure solar power deals for Adani Green Energy with multiple Indian states, mediated by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a public sector company. The indictment came days after President Donald Trump’s election victory was declared, towards the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Gautam Adani is the chairperson of Adani Group, and Sagar is executive director at Adani Green Energy.
The New York Times too has reported that the US DoJ plans to drop the charges against Adani. It said that the development came after Adani hired a new legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, who is one of Trump’s personal lawyers and co-chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
According to NYT, in a meeting last month at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, Giuffra presented around 100 slides arguing why prosecutors lacked evidence and jurisdiction to bring the case. One of the slides reportedly mentioned that if prosecutors dropped the charges, Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs. Gautam Adani had made the exact same promise when congratulating Trump on his election victory in 2024.
Adani is expected to face financial penalties even if the criminal charges are dropped, according to NYT.
Bloomberg had earlier reported that Adani and representatives of his companies were in talks with officials in the Trump administration since January 2025, trying to convince them that Adani’s prosecution doesn’t align with President Trump’s priorities.
At the time, Bloomberg mentioned that some of the people working in the US on behalf of Adani were Mark Filip of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, and representatives of a government relations firm called BGR Group, which also represents India in trade talks with the Trump administration.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is known to have a close association with Adani, was asked by a reporter during his US visit in February whether he discussed the issue with Trump. PM Modi replied in the negative, calling it a “personal matter.”
Earlier in August, the SEC said in a filing that they had asked India’s Ministry of Law & Justice for help in delivering the summons and complaint to the defendants in India, but Indian authorities had not delivered the documents.
