Transfer ownership of a file fails - even as Super Administrator (Google Drive API, Java) - google-drive-api

Question

I am trying to transfer ownership of files to Super Administrator. The essential part of the code is shown below. The same code works if I transfer ownership of a document that I own. But in this case the original owner is another user in the same domain. [EDIT] I know there is a "transfer-ownership-of-files-from-1-user-to-another" in admin panel, but this is needed for a case when multiple files/folders, from multiple owners needs to be transferred programmatically. [/EDIT]
So the simple scenario is:
user#domain.com owns a file
the ownership needs to be transferred to the admin#domain.com (Super Administrator). The code is running in AppEngine in Java Servlet. And the Super Administrator is authenticated with OAuth.
However it throws (500 OK) exception always in line update.execute(); (showed in the end).
Is this operation impossible even for a Super Admin?
Thanks for any tips!
try {
Drive service = getDriveService();
Permission newPerm = new Permission();
newPerm.setValue("admin#domain.com");
newPerm.setType("user");
newPerm.setRole("writer");
newPerm = service.permissions().insert(fileId, newPerm).execute();
newPerm.setRole("owner");
Update update = service.permissions().update(fileId, newPerm.getId(), newPerm);
update.setTransferOwnership(true);
update.execute();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
log.severe(e.getMessage());
}
The exception thrown looks like:
SEVERE: 500 OK
{
"code" : 500,
"errors" : [ {
"domain" : "global",
"message" : "Internal Error",
"reason" : "internalError"
} ],
"message" : "Internal Error"
}

Answer 1

I finally got this working at least partly. Thanks #ZigMandel for the "impersonation" hint! Now I followed this Domain-wide Delegation of Authority carefully. And used the GoogleCredential created using "Service account"-key. With this credential I can impersonate the Drive API operations like adding permissions and transferring ownership to Admin, for example.
The problem that still remains is that with current Drive API it is impossible to programmatically determine the owner email address, which is needed for impersonated credential creation. Now I need to find a workaround for this. Anyway the fundamental idea works now. Thanks!

Answer 2

You wont be able to do it from apps script.
Can be done from appengine. Ive done it but its beyond of the scope to explain here. Involves using the drive api on behalf of the file owner and adding the oauth permissions at the domain level.