NEW DELHI — Adani Enterprises Ltd. has agreed to pay $275 million to settle potential civil liability over apparent violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran related to the company’s purchase of liquefied petroleum gas, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Monday.
OFAC said the alleged violations stemmed from LPG shipments purchased by Adani Enterprises from a Dubai-based trader between November 2023 and June 2025. The trader claimed to be supplying gas from Oman and Iraq, but OFAC said warning signs should have alerted the company that the LPG may have originated in Iran.
“From November 2023 to June 2025, AEL purchased shipments of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) from a Dubai-based trader purporting to supply Omani and Iraqi gas. Red flags should have put AEL on notice that the LPG actually originated from Iran. During this time period, AEL caused US financial institutions to process 32 US dollar-denominated payments totalling approximately $192,104,044 for the shipments,” OFAC said in a statement.
Adani Enterprises entered the LPG market in June 2023, importing LPG for sale to customers in India. The following month, company representatives, including the head of its newly created LPG unit, met with representatives of a Dubai-based trading company involved in supplying purportedly Omani-origin LPG to another Indian entity.
In September 2023, the Dubai supplier told Adani Enterprises it could provide LPG through an affiliated entity. OFAC said an internal Adani Enterprises document from that period described the supplier as providing “discounted LPG from Middle East” on a spot basis. The Dubai supplier operated through several affiliated entities, according to the agency.
At the time, Adani Enterprises relied on a 2020 sanctions compliance program used by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd., which prohibited Iranian or sanctioned vessels and Iranian-origin cargo from entering APSEZ-controlled ports. The company also conducted standard Know Your Customer checks on the Dubai supplier and its affiliates, which did not identify matches on OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.
OFAC said the Dubai supplier presented itself as a reputable middleman dealing primarily in LPG from Oman and Iraq. The agency said the supplier was instead used as a conduit for illicit Iranian supply to enter the market.
The agency said concerns about the true origin of the cargo surfaced early in the relationship. Between March 2023 and February 2024, Adani Enterprises learned on at least four occasions of third-party concerns that cargo supplied by the Dubai trader may have originated in Iran, according to OFAC.
The settlement resolves Adani Enterprises’ potential civil liability for the apparent sanctions violations, OFAC said. (Source: IANS)
