The US Department of Justice has moved to drop criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, whom it had accused of orchestrating a major bribery and fraud scheme to secure solar energy contracts.

The DOJ reportedly decided to drop the case after Mr Adani committed to invest $10bn in the US and create 15,000 jobs.

“The Department of Justice has reviewed the case and has decided in its prosecutorial discretion not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants,” it said in a letter sent to Judge Nicholas Garaufis at the US District Court in the Eastern District of New York.

The request still needs to be approved by a judge.

The decision follows months of negotiations involving senior prosecutors in New York and Mr Adani’s lawyers and associates. It also comes after parallel resolutions with US financial regulators effectively closed multiple investigations into the Adani Group’s overseas dealings.

On Monday, the Department of the Treasury announced a $275m settlement with Adani Enterprises over alleged violations of Iran-related sanctions.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission concluded a civil case after Mr Adani agreed to pay a penalty without admitting wrongdoing.

“If approved by the court, it would order Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani to pay civil monetary penalties of $6,000,000 and $12,000,000, respectively,” the commission said in a statement on Thursday.

At the centre of the case being withdrawn were allegations that Mr Adani and his co-defendants engineered a $265m bribery scheme to secure solar energy contracts from Indian officials while misleading American investors about it during fundraising efforts.

The indictment, filed in 2024, included charges of securities and wire fraud conspiracy. American prosecutors had initially described Mr Adani’s conduct in stark terms, referring to an “elaborate” scheme involving “corruption and fraud at the expense of US investors”.

According to the New York Times, the turnaround followed Mr Adani’s appointment of a new legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, co-chair of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and personal lawyer to president Donald Trump.

Although prosecutors had informed Mr Giuffra that Mr Adani’s proposed $10bn investment would not influence the criminal case’s outcome, the idea was still met positively by at least one senior DOJ official during the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions, the outlet reported.

The DOJ had brought the case when Joe Biden was the US president. “The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars, and Gautam S Adani, Sagar R Adani and Vneet S Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from US and international investors,” Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at the time.

The prosecutors said Mr Adani and his associates misled American investors about the anti-corruption compliance practices of his company and raised more than $3bn in the process.

Arguments from the defence had focused heavily on jurisdiction and the framing of the allegations. In submissions to the court, Mr Adani’s lawyers argued that the matter represented an overreach of US law as it involved Indian defendants, an Indian issuer, and securities not traded on US markets. All the alleged conduct had occurred “exclusively in India”, they said.

They further contended that the prosecutors had failed to establish key elements of fraud, including investor harm, arguing that there were “no investor losses” and that bond obligations had been fully honoured.

Adani Group consistently denied wrongdoing throughout the proceedings, maintaining that its conduct complied with applicable laws and regulations.