New York: US Department of Justice has forcefully defended its decision to abandon the criminal case against Indian 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”.
DOJ had in 2024 under the Biden administration indicted Adani and others for allegedly being involved in a scheme to bribe Indian government officials to the tune of USD 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 USD 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, adding that such demand hurt defendants by potentially chilling the Department from seeking dismissal of criminal charges it determines are not in the interests of justice.
Waiving privilege only for this case, McCotter said he decided to dismiss the charges after months of meetings with defence lawyers, reviewing hundreds of pages of submissions and conducting his own legal analysis. “The decision to seek dismissal was not a close call,” he 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.
The indictment is about “several Indians (with maybe a European or two) allegedly trying to bridge other Indians by paying the Indian government via complex Indian rebate programs to get Indian contracts to provide Indian electricity to Indians in India.”
“The United States pretending to be the world police can cause diplomatic strife and also wastes resources better spent on domestic concerns. India can better manage its internal systems than can prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington,” McCotter wrote.
The filing also argued the criminal securities fraud charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and Cyril Cabanes lacked a sound legal basis because the alleged misconduct occurred almost entirely outside the United States and the securities transactions did not satisfy US jurisdictional requirements.
The DOJ said investors had not lost money because the notes at issue had either been fully repaid or continued to be serviced. It also questioned whether statements cited in the indictment amounted to criminal fraud, describing them as largely corporate “platitudes” and “puffery” that sophisticated institutional investors were unlikely to have relied upon.
“The securities charges should never have been brought,” McCotter wrote, adding that at most the allegations warranted civil, rather than criminal, resolution.
The department also said the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges no longer aligned with DOJ policy under Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s June 2025 memorandum directing prosecutors to focus on cases involving US national security, transnational criminal organisations, serious misconduct or harm to US companies.
“The alleged conduct did not involve criminal organizations, did not have any effect on US companies, did not in any way implicate national security, was not egregious, and has been the subject of investigations in India,” the filing said. “Under the Blanche Memorandum, the FCPA charges should have been dismissed a year ago.”
McCotter also rejected media reports suggesting the DOJ sought dismissal in exchange for promises of US investment by the Adani Group, calling such claims “false”.
“I would have sought dismissal of the securities charges regardless of any mentions of investments,” he wrote. “The mention of potential investments could not have played any role.”
The department urged the judge to promptly dismiss the case, arguing continued judicial scrutiny only prolonged uncertainty for defendants facing charges the government itself no longer believed should proceed.
“In short, there was absolutely nothing improper with the Department’s as-filed dismissal motion,” McCotter wrote. “The defendants have been held in limbo on charges that should have been dropped a year ago — or never brought in the first place.”
