By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has arranged to serve Gautam Adani with a civil fraud lawsuit, allowing the regulator's case against India's second-richest person to proceed.
In a Friday filing in the Brooklyn, New York federal court, the SEC and U.S.-based lawyers for Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani said the lawyers agreed to accept the SEC's legal papers, eliminating the need for U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis to rule on how the defendants
should be served.
If the judge approves the resolution, the Adanis will have 90 days to respond to the SEC's complaint, which could include requests for a dismissal.
Robert Giuffra, a lawyer for Gautam Adani, declined to comment. Sean Hecker, a lawyer for Sagar Adani, also declined to comment.
The SEC charged the Adanis in November 2024 with violating U.S. securities law by 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 are executives and directors.
Both defendants are in India, and the SEC had reported difficulty in serving them with legal papers.
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 for more than a year. The SEC's case had been stalled for most of that time.
Gautam Adani, 63, founded and chairs the conglomerate Adani Group. He is worth about $59 billion according to Forbes magazine.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
