A Brooklyn court has dismissed three of five charges against an Indian billionaire as prosecutors abandon a fraud probe; the judge reserved a ruling on the remaining counts and rebuked a senior DOJ official’s conduct.
NEW YORK — A US federal judge on Monday dismissed the bulk of a criminal indictment against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, closing out a high-profile fraud and bribery case even as he issued a stinging rebuke of the manner in which the Justice Department chose to abandon it, Reuters is reporting.
US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, sitting in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, granted federal prosecutors’ request to drop three of the five counts against Adani, according to a 47-page ruling. The judge reserved judgment on the remaining two counts, saying the Justice Department had failed to satisfy certain procedural requirements needed to dismiss them outright.
The decision brings to a close, at least in part, one of the most closely watched white-collar prosecutions of Trump’s second term, and one that had drawn intense scrutiny in India given Adani’s stature as one of the country’s most prominent industrialists and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Case unravels after May reversal
Adani was charged in 2024 with agreeing to bribe Indian government officials so that a subsidiary of the Adani Group could secure approval for a solar energy project, and with subsequently misleading American investors by offering reassuring statements about the conglomerate’s anti-corruption safeguards. The Adani Group has consistently denied any wrongdoing throughout the proceedings.
The billionaire never appeared before a US court to answer the charges. The case took a decisive turn on May 18, when the Justice Department informed the court it would no longer pursue the prosecution, marking the latest instance of federal prosecutors seeking to shelve a prominent white-collar case during the current administration.
Garaufis did not simply rubber-stamp that request. Legal experts note that judges generally have limited power to compel reluctant prosecutors to continue with a case, but a formal dismissal still requires judicial sign-off, and the judge made clear he intended to use that authority to interrogate the Justice Department’s reasoning rather than wave the matter through.
Judge presses on investment pledge
Central to Garaufis’s inquiry was whether a commercial commitment tied to Adani had any bearing on the government’s decision to drop the case. In November 2024, before the charges were unsealed, Adani had pledged to invest US$10 billion (S$13.5 billion) in the United States. The judge directly asked whether anything had been promised in exchange for the charges being dropped, and ultimately said he was satisfied that the investment pledge had not factored into the department’s decision.
Even so, Garaufis was pointed in his criticism of how the dismissal request had been assembled. He wrote that the Justice Department’s initial announcement in May had been “bland and conclusory,” and said it had not given him sufficient information to evaluate the government’s reasoning.
Rebuke of senior DOJ official
The judge reserved his sharpest language for Trent McCotter, the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, who had argued in a July 4 court filing for the charges to be dropped. Garaufis wrote that McCotter “appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment.”
The judge took particular issue with the process by which McCotter reached his conclusion, noting that it had been formed largely through discussions with Adani’s own defence lawyers rather than with the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agencies that had originally investigated the matter. Garaufis described the resulting irregularities as troubling, writing that the manner in which McCotter arrived at his decision “evinces a lack of respect for the Judiciary as a co-equal branch” of government.
A Justice Department spokesperson, responding to the ruling, pointed back to McCotter’s July 4 filing, in which he had said his decision followed meetings with defence counsel and fellow department lawyers, alongside his own independent research and analysis.
Part of a wider pattern
Adani’s case is not an isolated episode. It fits a broader pattern in which federal prosecutors have moved to unwind high-profile corporate and political corruption prosecutions since Trump returned to the White House, a trend that has unsettled some legal observers who argue it signals a retreat from aggressive white-collar enforcement. Critics have questioned whether such reversals reflect political considerations rather than the ordinary evolution of prosecutorial judgment, though the Justice Department has maintained that its decisions are grounded in legal and evidentiary assessments.
For Adani, the ruling removes much of the legal cloud that has hung over the conglomerate’s international operations since the indictment was unsealed nearly two years ago, even as two counts remain technically unresolved pending further procedural steps. The Adani Group has not issued a fresh statement following Monday’s ruling, having consistently maintained since the charges were first filed that the allegations were baseless.
The case now returns to a narrower footing, with Garaufis retaining oversight of the two outstanding counts until the Justice Department satisfies the procedural conditions he has set out.
