Adani Enterprises to pay $275 million settlement to the US treasury for buying Iranian gas

Mumbai: Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) on Monday said it has reached a $275 million (about ₹2,650 crore) settlement with the US Treasury for purchasing $192 million worth of sanctioned Iranian gas between November 2023 and June 2025.

Late last week, Adani and his nephew had paid $18 million to settle a separate suit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. On Monday, Reuters reported, citing court records, that the US Justice Department had decided to drop criminal fraud charges in that case.

The three developments bring the curtains down on all ongoing investigations and charges against Adani and his conglomerate in the US, ending over 18 months of uncertainty.

AEL informed stock exchanges that it had purchased liquified petroleum gas from a Dubai-based trader, who had led it to believe that it was from Oman and Iraq. AEL paid a total of $192,104,044 for the gas in 32 dollar-denominated tranches via US financial institutions.

The Adani Group flagship firm had made a voluntary outreach to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) after the Wall Street Journal reported on 2 June 2025 that US prosecutors were investigating whether it imported Iranian LPG. The company claimed that it cooperated with OFAC’s investigation. OFAC is a financial intelligence agency of the US Treasury Department that enforces international economic and trade sanctions.

OFAC findings

“OFAC determined that red flags should have put AEL on notice that the LPG actually originated from Iran, and that the company did not voluntarily self-disclose the apparent violations of Iran-related sanctions and that the apparent violations constitute an egregious case,” AEL's stock exchange disclosure said.

AEL ended with a profit of ₹10,777 crore in FY26. So, a $275 million settlement amounts to about a fourth of the company's net profit.

The WSJ had reported last June that it conducted an investigation into a group of LPG tankers travelling between Adani’s Mundra port in Gujarat and the Persian Gulf. It said these vessels exhibited behaviour typical of vessels trying to obscure their activities. A tanker’s tracking data showed it was at the Khor al Zubair port in southern Iraq on 3 April 2024, but satellite images from the day did not show the ship being present there. Instead, a similar looking ship was present the same day at an LPG terminal in Tonbuk, Iran. This ship eventually unloaded LPG at the Mundra port, the WSJ reported.

“Indeed, as early as AEL’s first shipment, signs were present that the cargos did not originate from the jurisdictions identified in the certificates of origin,” OFAC said on Monday.

The first shipment in November 2023 was purported to have been loaded in Sohar, Oman, the OFAC said. However, Sohar at the time did not have facilities for exporting fully-refrigerated LPG. Omani LPG exports originate primarily from the port of Salalah, the OFAC noted.

Moreover, the gas purchased by Adani was priced at a significant discount to prevalent market prices, which should have alerted the company to exercise a greater degree of scrutiny in confirming its source.

“For its part, AEL does not appear to have taken sufficient steps to investigate these red flags beyond reviewing shipping documentation and obtaining assurance from the Dubai Supplier that it was not selling Iranian-origin LPG after receipt of some of the third-party allegations,” the OFAC noted.