A US federal court dismissed the criminal bribery case against Gautam Adani, accepting the DOJ’s decision to drop it, but the judge criticised the process and said it was no finding on merits.
New Delhi: A United States federal court has dismissed the criminal case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, accepting the US Department of Justice’s decision to drop its prosecution over allegations of bribery and fraud, but the judge was pointedly critical of how that decision was reached, and made clear that the dismissal is neither an endorsement of the government’s choice nor any finding that the allegations against Adani lacked merit [United States v. Gautam S. Adani and Others].
US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, sitting in the Eastern District of New York at Brooklyn, approved federal prosecutors’ request to dismiss the charges on Monday. He did so only after requiring the Justice Department to explain why it had abandoned a prosecution it had launched with considerable fanfare in 2024.
A dismissal, but a critical one
The most important feature of the order, for anyone reading it as vindication or as conviction, is what it expressly is not. Judge Garaufis stated that his order dismissing the case should not be understood as an endorsement of the Justice Department’s decision, and that the dismissal did not amount to any determination of whether the allegations against Adani had merit.
That distinction is central, and it turns on a feature of US criminal procedure. Under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, prosecutors cannot simply walk away from a case they have charged; they need “leave of court” to dismiss an indictment. The rule exists precisely so that a court can act as a check against a dismissal sought for improper reasons — the judge’s role is to satisfy himself that the government’s motion is not tainted, not to retry the case. So when Judge Garaufis dismissed the charges, he was accepting that the prosecution could not be compelled to continue against its will; he was not acquitting Adani, and he was not pronouncing on guilt or innocence. The allegations were neither proved nor disproved. They were simply no longer being pursued.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Imposes Penalty of Rs 50,000 on Adani Power in Review Case
The judge’s disquiet over the process
Judge Garaufis reserved his sharpest words for how the Justice Department arrived at its decision. He said he was satisfied that a prior commitment by Adani to invest $10 billion in the United States had not influenced the government’s decision to drop the charges, but he criticised the process itself, and in particular the role of Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter.
According to the judge, McCotter had taken the decision after discussions with Adani’s defence lawyers, without seeking the views of the prosecutors and federal agents who had actually investigated the case. Describing the circumstances as concerning, the judge observed that McCotter appeared to have disregarded the professional assessments of officials across several federal offices and substituted his own judgment.
The Justice Department has defended the decision. In an earlier filing, McCotter had said the prosecution was primarily concerned with conduct occurring outside the United States, would be difficult to prove, and did not align with the department’s current enforcement priorities.
Reacting to the dismissal, Gautam Adani welcomed the US court’s decision in a post on X, framing it as a vindication of his position through the judicial process.
“I welcome the US court’s decision with humility and deep respect for the judicial process,” he wrote, adding that “throughout this challenging period, our faith in truth, fairness and the rule of law remained unwavering.”
Expressing gratitude to “those who never lost faith in us, in the system and in India’s capacity for justice,” the industrialist said the group would “continue doing what matters: building for our nation, creating value that outlasts us and serving a purpose larger than ourselves,” and signed off with “Jai Hind.”
The $10 billion pledge, and a pointed remark on the rule of law
The proceedings had drawn attention to Adani’s earlier commitment to invest $10 billion in the United States, which he acknowledged in a court filing that he had made in 2024. His lawyers had told the Justice Department that the Adani Group was willing to follow through on that investment as part of a possible resolution of the case, though the department denied that the promise played any role in its decision to seek dismissal.
Judge Garaufis said he was not taking a position on the propriety of the defence’s attempts to resolve the case through monetary or other offers. But he left a question hanging for the public to weigh — inviting reflection on what implications such offers could carry for the equal administration of justice and the rule of law. It was an unusually direct judicial comment on the optics of a wealthy defendant’s efforts to make a prosecution go away, even as the judge accepted that he had no power to force the prosecution to continue.
The civil settlements remain
The dismissal of the criminal case does not wipe the slate clean. Separately, Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani have agreed to pay $6 million and $12 million respectively to resolve civil allegations brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Adani Enterprises has agreed to pay $275 million to settle allegations concerning violations of US sanctions relating to Iran. Civil settlements of this kind are typically entered into without any admission of wrongdoing, but they mark a financial and reputational cost that survives the collapse of the criminal case.
The judge also indicated that the criminal matter is not fully closed as against everyone: he said he required further information from the Justice Department before deciding whether to dismiss the charges against the other defendants named in the broader case.
Background: the 2024 indictment
The charges against Adani arose from a criminal indictment unsealed in 2024, which accused him and others of participating in a scheme involving alleged payments to Indian government officials to secure approval for a solar energy project, and alleged that investors in the United States had been misled about the group’s anti-corruption practices. The case, brought under the United States’ expansive foreign-bribery jurisdiction, had reverberated far beyond American courtrooms — it became the subject of political controversy in India and of litigation before the Indian courts, including pleas seeking a domestic investigation into the same allegations. The Adani Group had consistently denied the charges as baseless.
With the US criminal prosecution now dismissed — though without any adjudication of the underlying allegations — the centre of gravity of the Adani bribery controversy shifts back to those civil settlements, to the still-open questions about the other defendants, and to whatever the Indian proceedings make of allegations that have now been dropped in the very jurisdiction where they were first brought.
FOR MORE LEGAL UPDATES FOLLOW US ON YOUTUBE