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
According to McCotter, before the investment promise arose in his meetings with defence counsel, he had already “firmly concluded” that he “would seek dismissal of the securities charges no matter what”, the court noted.
While requesting for dismissal of the case against Adani, the DOJ invoked Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, which allows government bodies like the Department of Justice to act through their Attorney General or other attorneys to move to drop charges.
“The government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant’s consent,” the provision specifies.
The reasons for the DOJ seeking dismissal of the case against Adani included hypothetical concerns of “diplomatic strife” and ”wasted resources”, the court noted while adding that McCotter’s letter had also made the unsubstantiated claims that “India can better manage its internal systems” as opposed to the prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington.
McCotter’s second reason to dismiss all counts against Adani was that India had already investigated many of the allegations in this case and in several reports and decisions issued in 2026, found no actionable misconduct. In support of this, he had cited a series of Indian court rulings, such as the ones delivered in 2025 by the Bombay High Court, Delhi High Court, and the Competition Commission of India.
However, the judge termed these Indian court rulings as “unauthenticated foreign legal documents” while adding that these were insufficient in satisfying the court’s oversight obligations under Rule 48(a). “Further, inspection of the documents reveals that they do not provide support for, and instead contradict, McCotter’s characterisation of their contents,” the court said, adding that some of the judgments shared with it ran counter to Adani’s case.
The chequered history of this case
The case dates back to 24 October 2024, when a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District
of New York returned an indictment against Adani, Jain, Ranjit Gupta, Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra, and Rupesh Agarwal. Following this, arrest warrants were issued too, the court noted.
The 54-page indictment detailed serious accusations of foreign corrupt practices, fraud, obstruction, and conspiracy between 2020 and 2024 in furtherance of three alleged schemes.
The first was paying “approximately $265 million in bribes” to Indian government officials for “lucrative” solar energy contracts with Indian government entities. The second allegation was that these accused persons lied to US and international investors to raise ”billions of dollars in financing”. Finally, they were accused of impeding the investigations by US government entities.
On 13 November 2024, defendant Gautam Adani congratulated President Trump on his victory and announced his commitment to invest $10 billion in the United States, the court also noted.
Despite regular status reports from the SEC on this case, neither the U.S. Attorney’s Office nor the Department took any action on the docket in this case, the court noted.
Following this, Trump also stayed the operation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which says that by opting into the US public markets, the company also opts into certain reporting practices and good governance standards, including not to bribe “any foreign official”.
“On 10 February 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14209, entitled ‘Pausing [FCPA] Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security’. In doing so, the government also directed the Department to review in detail all existing FCPA enforcement actions within 180 days, the court noted.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: US judge dismisses criminal case against Indian billionaire Adani