New Delhi: Over three months after the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) decided to abandon the fraud and bribery case against Adani group founder Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani, a US federal court Monday dismissed the criminal charges against them, acting on the DOJ’s request.
In a 47-page ruling, US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis allowed the federal prosecutors’ request to drop the case, after asking the DOJ for the reason. The judge also asked if Adani’s promise to invest $10 billion played a role in the case’s dismissal.Interestingly, the court noted that although it had asked the DOJ to give reasons for seeking the dismissal, it was senior DOJ official R. Trent McCotter who wrote to the judge saying that Adani’s decision to “invest money in the United States” had nothing to do with the decision to ask for a dismissal.
Underlining that it was “highly unusual” for McCotter to have made the decision, without seeking any inputs from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the court said, “McCotter appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment”.The fact that McCotter came to this decision largely in collaboration with defence counsel, and “seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or the attorneys from the Department, SEC, and US Attorney’s Office who brought the case, appears to be highly unusual,” the court said.The court also pointed out that McCotter had refused to meet the procedural requirements for invoking Rule 48(a) “even after the court’s clear direction to do so”. This signalled a lack of respect for the judiciary as a co-equal branch.The court also said that the irregularities in the US government’s decision to dismiss the Indictment were “concerning”.Although courts often refer to foreign legal precedents, as a matter of course, the judge in this court pointed out that the US government could not rely on “unauthenticated foreign legal documents” as these are irrelevant.“India’s laws are not this country’s laws. It is obvious that the court cannot discharge its Rule 48(a) duty to review the Department’s reasons for dismissal by relying solely on “reports and decisions” from foreign tribunals applying foreign laws in foreign judicial systems,” the court said.Whatever determinations India’s tribunals may have made under India’s legal standards about some of the alleged conduct in this case have no bearing on the court’s decision, it noted.In a nutshell, the 10 August 2026 order by the Eastern District of New York has allowed the dismissal of three securities and fraud counts against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and former Adani Green Energy CEO Vneet Jaain. However, the court stopped short of dismissing the charges under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) relating to bribery and obstruction of justice.The DOJ has now been asked to come before the court on 31 August and provide proper reasons and factual support for seeking dismissal of those charges.Why the DOJ sought dismissal
