NEW YORK: The US Department of Justice has forcefully defended its decision to abandon the criminal case against billionaire Gautam Adani and seven others, telling a federal judge the prosecution was legally flawed, diplomatically counterproductive and inconsistent with the Trump administration’s enforcement priorities.
In a sharply worded 10-page filing, the DOJ said the case “should have been dropped a year ago, or never brought in the first place,” arguing that the court had only a limited role in reviewing its decision to dismiss charges with prejudice.
The filing came after US district judge Nicholas Garaufis asked the department to explain why it was seeking to permanently dismiss the indictment, calling its earlier motion “terse, bland, and conclusory”.
The DOJ had in 2024 under the Biden administration indicted Adani and others for their alleged involvement in a scheme to bribe Indian government officials to the tune of $250 million and to lie to investors to receive billions more in investments from other entities — during which alleged scheme Adani Green Energy Ltd raised at least $175 million from US investors. The DOJ said requiring prosecutors to publicly justify decisions to drop cases would discourage future dismissals, expose privileged internal deliberations and infringe on the executive branch’s constitutional authority over charging decisions.
“Judicial inquisitions into the bases for dismissal will expose privileged internal debates,” principal associate deputy attorney general R Trent McCotter wrote.
The department cited six overarching reasons for dropping all charges, including that the alleged conduct was overwhelmingly centred in India, Indian authorities had investigated the allegations and found no actionable misconduct, investors suffered no financial losses, key evidence and witnesses were located abroad, the defendants were unlikely to ever appear before a US court, and the prosecution faced significant evidentiary hurdles. “This is a foreign case,” McCotter wrote.