India’s Law ministry admits asking Ahmedabad court to serve Adani in US SEC suit after earlier denial

The Department of Legal Affairs (DLA), under the Union Law Ministry of India, has confirmed the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had sought assistance in its lawsuit against Gautam Adani, the founder and chairman of Adani Group, and asked Ahmedabad sessions court to serve in Adani, The Hindu reported.

DLA acknowledged the request for assistance by the USSEC in response to an RTI filed by The Hindu, an Indian daily.

The action was reportedly taken under the Hague Convention for Service of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters, 1965, which allows the signatory countries – in this instance India and the US – to serve legal papers to residents living in these countries.

As per the daily, the DLA had initially denied receiving a request to forward a court summons when asked through a Right to Information (RTI) application on February 19. But later, it turned out they had already sent the summons to the court a week before they responded to the RTI on March 3. Their denial was based on information “as of February 21”.

The Eastern District of New York court in November 2024 charged Gautam Adani, along with several other individuals — including Sagar Adani, Vneet Jain, Ranjit Gupta, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal — with multiple counts of fraud and for misleading investors about the scheme.

Senior executives from an Indian renewable energy company, an American company, and a Canadian investor are also implicated in the bribery scheme.

They allegedly bribed Indian government officials to secure solar energy supply contracts and misrepresented their anti-bribery practices to investors. According to court documents, they also obstructed a US government investigation into the scheme.

The defendants are accused of paying over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy contracts worth billions of dollars for Adani Green Energy, a renewable energy company majority-owned by the Adani Group.