By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, April 7 (Reuters) – Gautam Adani, India’s second richest person, will ask a U.S. judge to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil fraud case stemming from an alleged bribery scheme, his lawyers said on Tuesday.
Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani were charged by the SEC in November 2024 with orchestrating a scheme to pay or promise to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to benefit Adani Green Energy, where both men are executives and directors.
The securities fraud case is tied to Adani Green’s alleged failure to disclose the scheme in documents for a $750 million bond offering in 2021.
In a filing in the Brooklyn, New York federal court, the Adanis’ lawyers said their clients disputed there was any credible evidence supporting the alleged bribery scheme.
The lawyers said the Adanis’ lack of involvement in the offering, and the absence of any intent to defraud or negligence, supported a dismissal.
They also called the SEC claims “impermissibly extraterritorial,” reflecting how the Adanis and all alleged misconduct were in India, and the bonds were never traded on a U.S. exchange.
The SEC had no immediate comment. Lawyers for the Adanis said they will formally seek a dismissal by April 30.
U.S. prosecutors filed a related criminal case in November 2024 against the Adanis and several other defendants. There have been no public developments in that case since December 2024. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment.
Gautam Adani, 63, founded and chairs the conglomerate Adani Group, and is chairman of Adani Green.
He is worth about $60.6 billion, ranking 30th worldwide according to Forbes magazine.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the conglomerate Reliance Industries, is India’s richest person, worth about $91.4 billion and ranking 20th worldwide, Forbes said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New YorkEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Bill Berkrot)
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