US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York granted the Justice Department's Rule 48(a) motion, dismissing Counts Two, Three and Four of the indictment -- covering securities-fraud conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy and securities fraud -- with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled.

The court reserved judgment on Count One (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations) and Count Five (obstruction of justice) as they relate to non-appearing defendants, pending further compliance by the government with Rule 48(a).

"Truth has prevailed," Gautam Adani said in response to the ruling, adding that he respected the judicial process and thanked those who had stood by the Group through the proceedings, while reaffirming its commitment to "nation-building" and "long-term value creation."

The indictment, unsealed in November 2024, alleged Adani Group executives paid roughly USD 265 million in bribes to Indian officials to secure solar-power contracts projected to generate more than USD 2 billion in profits, while misleading investors who helped raise nearly USD 4 billion in US financing, and that other defendants destroyed evidence and lied to federal investigators.

The Adani Group has consistently denied the allegations, calling them baseless.

US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis granted the Justice Department's Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss Counts Two, Three and Four of the indictment against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and former Adani Green CEO Vneet Jaain.

The counts covered securities-fraud conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy and securities fraud.

The court found that the DOJ had met the legal requirements for dismissal on one ground: its argument that alleged statements about Adani Green's anti-bribery policies and corporate compliance could amount to "inactionable puffery" -- broad statements that investors could not reasonably rely on -- creating legal risks for the prosecution.

The order followed the Justice Department's decision to seek dismissal after an extensive review of the case. In its submissions before the court, the government said continuing the prosecution no longer served the interests of justice, citing significant jurisdictional and evidentiary challenges, the predominantly Indian nature of the alleged conduct, the fact that Indian authorities had examined the matter, the absence of identified investor losses and broader public-interest considerations.

The DoJ also stated that the indictment, unsealed in November 2024 during the closing weeks of the previous Biden administration, had little realistic prospect of proceeding to trial and appeared to have been a politically motivated "name and shame" exercise orchestrated by the outgoing administration.

Before approving the request, Judge Nicholas Garaufis directed the DoJ to publicly explain its reasons for seeking dismissal and required the defendants to file sworn declarations confirming there had been no promise, offer, quid pro quo or undisclosed agreement connected with the decision.

In his sworn declaration, Gautam Adani categorically denied the existence of any promise, offer, quid pro quo or undisclosed agreement relating to the DoJ's decision. After reviewing the government's submissions and the sworn declarations, the court accepted the motion and permanently dismissed the case.

The dismissal means the criminal proceedings concluded before trial. No witnesses were examined, no evidence was tested in court and no judicial findings were made on the underlying criminal allegations.

Separately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission's civil action against Gautam Adani has resulted in a final judgment under which he consented to permanent injunctions covering specified US securities-law violations without admitting the allegations, except as to jurisdiction.

Adani welcomed the decision "with humility and deep respect for the judicial process".

"Throughout this challenging period, our faith in truth, fairness and the rule of law remained unwavering. My deepest gratitude to those who never lost faith in us, in the system and in India's capacity for justice. We will continue doing what matters: building for our nation, creating value that outlasts us and serving a purpose larger than ourselves. That is our commitment," he said in a post on X.

ORIGINS OF THE CASE

The indictment, returned by a grand jury on October 24, 2024 and unsealed on November 20, alleged three interlocking schemes between 2020 and 2024: paying roughly USD 265 million in bribes to Indian officials to secure solar-power contracts projected to generate more than USD 2 billion in after-tax profits over two decades; misleading US and international investors to raise close to USD 4 billion in financing; and destroying evidence and lying to the FBI, SEC and a federal grand jury to obstruct the resulting investigations.

The charges followed shortly after Gautam Adani twice publicly congratulated then-President-elect Trump on X, including a November 13, 2024 post announcing the Group's intent to "invest USD 10 billion in US energy security and resilient infrastructure projects."

The Adani Group has consistently denied the allegations, maintaining it acted in line with applicable law. The proceedings unfolded against a backdrop of intense scrutiny following a January 2023 short-seller report from Hindenburg Research, which triggered a rout that briefly wiped out more than USD 150 billion in the Group's market value. These allegations were also rejected by the Group.

AN EXTENSIVE DEFENCE CAMPAIGN

Adani's legal team, retained in August 2025, spent what Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell described as "many thousands of hours" on the matter, submitting roughly 600 pages of legal argument, expert reports and presentations to the DOJ over ten weeks between February 3 and April 17, 2026 -- including an 118-page letter, a 95-page slide deck, a separate 151-page presentation to the SEC, and around 200 pages of expert opinions from four specialists: a Harvard Law School professor, a former Acting SEC Chair, a former Chief Justice of India, and a former chairman of India's Central Electricity Authority.

BUSINESS UNAFFECTED

The Adani Group says the litigation never interrupted its operations, financing or project execution. It invested more than Rs 2.08 lakh crore in the second half of FY25 and FY26, including record annual capital expenditure of Rs 1,52,967 crore in FY26 -- the highest by any Indian corporate -- while its asset base grew from Rs 4.12 lakh crore in FY23 to Rs 7.85 lakh crore in FY26 and its market capitalisation recovered above pre-indictment levels.

Major projects came onstream during the period, including Navi Mumbai International Airport, Terminal 2 at Guwahati Airport, the Colombo West International Terminal, and the Ganga Expressway; Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone became India's first port operator to handle more than 500 million metric tonnes of cargo in a financial year; and Adani Green Energy crossed 20 gigawatts of operational renewable capacity.

Credit-rating agencies upgraded several Group companies during the period, investors, including Apollo Global Management, BlackRock and Capital Group expanded their positions, banks such as MUFG, SMBC, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and Société Générale deepened their relationships with the Group, and partnerships with Google, MSC, IHC, EdgeConneX, Embraer and Dioxycle also broadened.

Adani had announced nearly USD 15 billion in fresh investment commitments in a single week as the US legal clouds began to clear.

DISMISSAL

Judge Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York granted the DOJ's Rule 48(a) motion in part, dismissing Counts Two, Three and Four of the indictment -- securities-fraud conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy and securities fraud -- against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and and former Adani Green Energy CEO Vneet Jaain, with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled.

He reserved judgment on the remaining charges: Count One, alleging Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations, and Count Five, alleging conspiracy to obstruct justice, both brought against five non-appearing, India-based co-defendants -- Ranjit Gupta, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal.

The DOJ has until August 31 to satisfy the court's requirements on those two counts, and the non-appearing defendants' counsel must confirm their clients' consent by the same date.

Garaufis was explicit that the outcome reflects prosecutorial discretion, not a verdict. "No one should mistake the court's granting of the Rule 48(a) Motion as to Counts Two, Three, and Four, for the court's agreement with the Department's decision to dismiss these Counts or as expressing any opinion about the merits of the case," he wrote. No trial was held, no witnesses testified, and no evidence was tested.

Of six sweeping "overlapping" justifications offered by the DOJ for dismissing all charges against all defendants -- including that "this is a foreign case", that India had "found no actionable conduct," and that "not a single penny has ever been lost on the securities at issue" -- the judge rejected every one as unsupported.

On the government's claim that the case was essentially foreign, he noted tartly that if counting mentions of "India" in the indictment settled the question, the 108 references to "United States" and 110 to "US Issuer" might just as easily make it a domestic case.

On the claim that Indian authorities had cleared the conduct, he found the three unauthenticated Indian filings cited by the DOJ did not, in fact, support that assertion at all -- they were decisions by Indian bodies not to investigate, brought by private complainants on unrelated claims, and "not one of the documents meaningfully contends with the allegations in this case".

The one rationale the court did accept: that the alleged false statements in Adani Green's bond and loan documents -- pledges of a "zero tolerance policy for bribery and corruption," "robust internal compliance measures" and oversight by a "risk management committee" -- amounted to "inactionable puffery", the kind of generic corporate assurance courts have found too vague for investors to reasonably rely on.

That alone, the judge found, was sufficient and substantial grounds to dismiss the three fraud-related counts. He explicitly rejected the DOJ's separate argument that the transactions fell outside US securities jurisdiction, noting the indictment itself alleges investors "irrevocably committed themselves in the United States" and that the scheme relied on the US financial system.

The most pointed criticism was reserved for how the dismissal decision was made inside the DOJ. Garaufis wrote that the process contained "irregularities" and was "highly unusual," describing how Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General R Trent McCotter -- who joined the Deputy Attorney General's office in January 2026 and, by his own account, "had never heard of any defendants in this case" -- became the sole architect of the dismissal after months of meetings with Adani's defence team, "with tremendous help from counsel for Appearing Defendants," and apparently without input from the FBI, SEC investigators, or the prosecutors who originally built the case.

Two DOJ attorneys involved in bringing the original indictment, Shy Jackson and Andrew Tyler, withdrew from the case two days after McCotter filed the dismissal motion.

Garaufis was equally unsparing of McCotter's written justifications, calling one claim -- that prior DOJ leadership had unsealed the indictment as a "name and shame" exercise, dumping "a potential quagmire of a case into the lap of the incoming Administration" -- "baseless" and "unbecoming of his office", adding that in 26 years on the bench he did not share McCotter's characterisation of the FBI, SEC, and prosecutors' integrity.

THE USD 10 BILLION QUESTION

Central to the proceedings was whether Gautam Adani's publicly announced pledge to invest USD 10 billion in the US had influenced the DOJ's decision. In a sworn affidavit, Adani stated, "I am not aware of anything promised, offered, sought, received, agreed to, or accepted by anyone in connection with the dismissal of the indictment."

He disclosed, however, that during settlement talks his counsel had suggested his "publicly stated intent to invest USD 10 billion in the United States might be part of a resolution... if that was what the DOJ or SEC wanted."

His lead counsel, Giuffra -- who is also President Donald Trump's personal attorney -- said in his own declaration that he had raised the investment offer with the DOJ "on two occasions".

A May 11, 2026 email from US Attorney Joseph Nocella, cited in the ruling, responded that "the portion of the joint defense offer made by [Appearing Defendants] to resolve the criminal charges against them by, in part, a general proposal to invest USD 10 billion in the United States is categorically rejected by this Office," adding that the proposal "will not be considered by this Office."

After reviewing the affidavits, Garaufis wrote he was "now convinced" McCotter was the "sole decisionmaker" and that the investment pledge was, in fact, a "non-consideration."

The court's scrutiny was heightened by news coverage referenced in McCotter's own filings -- including reporting on the "transactional nature" of the department's motion, on Giuffra's ties to Trump, and on a reported November 2025 meeting between Gautam Adani and Donald Trump Jr.

Those reports also prompted Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal to write to then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in June, raising "serious questions" about "the role that Mr Adani's politically salient offer played in the DOJ's decision" -- a letter the court noted the department has not answered.

Separately, on the same day the dismissal motion was filed, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a USD 275 million settlement with Adani Enterprises over "apparent violations" of US sanctions on Iran, in which OFAC found the company's conduct "egregious" though it "extensively cooperated" with the probe.