U.S. to drop graft charges against Gautam Adani: NY Times
Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and six others on multiple counts of fraud. File
| Photo Credit: ANI
U.S. prosecutors are set to drop charges against billionaire Gautam Adani, who was accused of paying hundreds of millions of dollars of bribes and hiding the payments, The New York Times reported Thursday (May 14, 2026).With a business empire spanning coal, airports, cement and media, the chairman of Adani Group has been rocked in recent years by corporate fraud allegations and a stock crash.A close acolyte of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he was alleged in November 2024 to have agreed to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.The Times said the move to abandon the charges, brought under U.S. president Joe Biden’s administration, came after Adani hired new lawyers led by Robert Giuffra, one of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.The Times reported that at a meeting between defence and prosecution at the Department of Justice in April, Giuffra presented slides, including one that said that if prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs.Prosecutors previously detailed how one of Mr. Adani’s alleged accomplices meticulously tracked payments, using his phone to log the bribes offered to officials.The Department of Justice did not respond to an AFP call for comment. Published - May 14, 2026 10:42 pm IST
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