The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has moved ahead with its civil fraud case against Gautam Adani, making arrangements to formally serve him with the lawsuit. The step clears the way for the regulator to continue legal proceedings against the Indian billionaire, who is currently the India’s second-richest individual.
In a filing submitted on Friday in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, the SEC said lawyers representing Adani and his nephew, Sagar Adani, have agreed to receive the agency’s legal documents. The move removes the need for U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis to step in and decide how the defendants should be formally served.
If the court signs off on the arrangement, the Adanis will have 90 days to file their response to the SEC’s complaint, a submission that could also seek to have the case thrown out. Attorneys for both sides remained tight-lipped, with Gautam Adani’s lawyer Robert Giuffra and Sagar Adani’s counsel Sean Hecker declining to comment.
READ: Adani Group stocks slide amid SEC investigation (January 23, 2026)
The SEC first brought charges against the Adanis in November 2024, accusing them of breaching U.S. securities laws by allegedly engineering a scheme that involved paying, or offering to pay, hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials. The agency claims the actions were meant to benefit Adani Green Energy, where both Gautam and Sagar Adani hold executive and board positions.
Both men are based in India, and the SEC has previously said it faced challenges in formally delivering legal notices to them.
U.S. prosecutors also launched a parallel criminal case in November 2024 against the Adanis and several other individuals. Since then, the matter has seen little public movement for over a year, a period during which the SEC’s civil case was largely on hold.
Gautam Adani, 63, is the founder and chairman of the Adani Group. Forbes estimates his net worth at around $59 billion.