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 against him, 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, Adani’s lawyers said the SEC claims were “impermissibly extraterritorial,” given that the defendants and all alleged misconduct were in India, and the bonds were never traded on a U.S. exchange.
The lawyers also said the Adanis’ lack of involvement in the offering and the absence of credible evidence supporting the bribery scheme supported a dismissal.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New YorkEditing by Tomasz Janowski)