WASHINGTON – The US Justice Department defended its move to drop the criminal case against Gautam Adani, arguing that securities charges against the Indian billionaire never should have been brought in the first place.
Trent McCotter, principal associate deputy attorney general, said in a filing to a US judge on July 4 that the department’s move in May to abandon the case was not “a close call”.
The Brooklyn-based federal judge overseeing the case, Nicholas Garaufis, asked the department in June to explain its decision to ditch the blockbuster case filed in 2024 at the end of the Biden administration.
The indictment, which accused Adani and others of a scheme to pay more than US$250 million (S$323 million) in bribes to Indian government officials to lock in solar energy contracts, immediately drew some criticism as an overreach. The Justice Department claimed some of the accused, including Adani, had lied about the alleged scheme when seeking to raise capital from US and international investors.
In May, the Justice Department said it had decided “not to devote further resources to these criminal charges”. Garaufis had given the department a deadline of later in July to explain its reasoning.
Among the explanations McCotter presented for dropping the case were that it was a foreign matter and would have presented “extraordinary proof problems”. He also argued that “not a single penny has ever been lost on the securities at issue”.
“The United States pretending to be the world police can cause diplomatic strife and also wastes resources better spent on domestic concerns,” McCotter said. “India can better manage its internal systems than can prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington.”
He added that India has “investigated many of the allegations in this case and in several reports and decisions issued in 2026 has found no actionable misconduct”.
An Adani Group representative had no immediate comment. A lawyer for Gautam Adani declined to comment.
McCotter also told Garaufis the department’s discretion to dismiss cases is protected by the US Constitution. He said that it would be “problematic to hold defendants’ dismissals hostage while the Court questions an outcome all parties have agreed is appropriate”.
He said the decision to move to drop the case was entirely based on a review of the merits of the matter and denied that a pledge by Adani to invest in the US played any role in the decision.
The billionaire had publicly said he planned to invest US$10 billion just after Americans elected Trump as president in late 2024. Among more than 100 slides that Adani’s legal team used to argue against the criminal case in 2026 was one that referenced the US$10 billion pledge, Bloomberg has reported.
“The Department should be credited for ending these criminal security charges before having to endure a likely loss on the merits,” McCotter wrote. “I was the final and sole decision maker to seek dismissal of the charges here,” he also said in the filing. BLOOMBERG
