New Delhi: A US federal court dismissed securities and wire fraud charges against Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and Adani Green Energy chief executive Vneet Jaain, but refused to drop bribery and obstruction charges against five other defendants for now , with the judge sharply criticising the Justice Department for citing Indian court and regulatory orders that never examined the bribery allegations at the heart of the indictment.In a 47-page order issued on Monday (August 10), Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted, in part, the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the indictment, throwing out with prejudice the securities fraud conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy and securities fraud counts against the three businessmen who had appeared before the court through their lawyers.But he reserved judgment on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charge against five other defendants – Ranjit Gupta and Rupesh Agarwal, former executives of renewable-energy company Azure Power, and Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal and Deepak Malhotra, former executives of Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), which was a major investor in Azure Power. The obstruction charge applies to four of the five, with the judge ordering the department to return with a fuller factual justification by August 31.The judge found that only one of the 11 reasons put forward by Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter was sufficient for dismissal. He accepted the argument that the statements in Adani Green’s financial documents about its anti-bribery policies amounted to “inactionable puffery”.In a footnote near the end of the ruling, Garaufis wrote: “No one should mistake the court’s granting of the Rule 48(a) Motion as to Counts Two, Three, and Four, for the court’s agreement with the Department’s decision to dismiss these Counts or as expressing any opinion about the merits of the case.”The ruling came after a two-month back-and-forth between the court and the Justice Department over the department’s May 18 request to abandon the prosecution. Garaufis initially declined to approve the motion, which contained little more than the assertion that the DOJ had decided “in its prosecutorial discretion” not to devote further resources to the case, and ordered prosecutors to provide detailed reasons and factual support, prompting McCotter’s July 4 submission.Reacting to the ruling on X, Gautam Adani struck a note of vindication, saying he welcomed the court’s decision “with humility and deep respect for the judicial process”. “Throughout this challenging period, our faith in truth, fairness and the rule of law remained unwavering,” he wrote, thanking “those who never lost faith in us, in the system and in India’s capacity for justice”.The judge, however, has pointedly rejected McCotter’s claim that Indian authorities had already examined the allegations.The Indian orders were decisions “not to investigate”, US judge saysIn his July 4 letter to the court, McCotter had told the judge 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,” directing the court to three Indian documents he said he had reviewed before filing the dismissal motion.Garaufis said the documents did not support that description. “Not one of the documents appears to be the result of an investigation by India or anyone else,” he wrote. “Rather, each document appears to be a decision by an Indian government authority not to investigate.”The judge added that none of the three documents “meaningfully contends with the allegations in this case”. The allegations raised by private individuals in the Indian proceedings, he said, bore “very little resemblance” to the conduct alleged in the US indictment.The judge went through each of the three filings in turn. The Competition Commission of India’s April 2026 order, he noted, had considered a private complaint alleging that the Adani Group had “abused their market dominance” in India’s power generation sector in violation of the Competition Act. But, Garaufis noted, the US indictment did not allege industry collusion. The CCI had decided not to investigate the complaint, and the judge said it appeared to have concluded that the bribery allegations contained in the US indictment “do not seem to qualify” as violations of the Competition Act.The Delhi high court’s March 2026 order, he wrote, had declined “a private individual’s invitation to investigate ‘grave irregularities’ in the ‘competitive bidding process for solar power projects'” under its public interest litigation jurisdiction. “No allegations of bribery, securities fraud, or wire fraud were made or investigated,” he wrote.The third was a March 27 Bombay high court judgment concerning a private petition seeking an investigation into alleged bribery. That court too declined to investigate, relying in part on the Delhi high court’s earlier decision.None of the three documents, Garaufis noted, addressed the other allegations in the US case either. They said nothing about the alleged lies and omissions by the appearing defendants to US lenders and investors, or about the alleged destruction of evidence and false statements to FBI, SEC and Justice Department officials in New York by the non-appearing defendants.The judge therefore found that the Indian decisions did not support McCotter’s claim. In his discussion of the FCPA charge, Garaufis described McCotter’s assertion that the alleged conduct “has been the subject of investigations in India” as “not only without sufficient factual support, but also inaccurate”.He also rejected the idea that the Indian decisions could by themselves provide a basis for dismissing criminal charges under US law. “India’s laws are not this country’s laws,” Garaufis wrote, saying that whatever conclusions Indian tribunals had reached under Indian law had no bearing on whether the charges should be dismissed under US criminal law.The three documents were also unauthenticated foreign legal documents, which the judge said were insufficient to satisfy his obligation to independently review the Justice Department’s request under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.Judge questions DOJ on its reasons for dropping the casesThe judge was unsparing of McCotter’s other broad justifications for seeking dismissal of the entire indictment, all of which he found unsupported by sufficient factual evidence.McCotter had put forward six “overlapping bases” for dismissing all charges against all eight defendants. He argued that any one of them was sufficient and that, taken together, they demonstrated that the entire case should be dismissed.Garaufis rejected all six of McCotter’s “overlapping” reasons, one of which was that “this is a foreign case”. McCotter had pointed to the fact that “India” appeared more than 200 times in the indictment.Dismissing the reasoning, the judge pointed out that “United States” appeared 108 times and “U.S. Issuer” appeared another 110 times, which could “well render this a domestic case”.He was similarly dismissive of McCotter’s references to possible “diplomatic strife” and “waste[d] resources”, as well as his assertion that India could better manage its internal systems than prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington. The judge noted that McCotter’s reasoning failed to account for conduct alleged to have taken place in the United States, including alleged lies to FBI, SEC and Justice Department officials in New York.McCotter’s “name and shame” claim rejectedMcCotter had also argued that the Biden administration’s decision to unseal the indictment shortly before the 2024 presidential transition was politically motivated.He described it as a “name and shame” exercise designed to make accusations without any realistic prospect of trial, and said the previous Justice Department leadership had knowingly dropped a “potential quagmire” into the incoming administration’s lap.Garaufis described the allegation as an “unsworn, unsubstantiated statement” about the motives and integrity of officials at four government offices.“McCotter appears to be accusing officials across four different government offices of bringing a detailed 54-page, 5-count indictment out of spite,” he wrote, adding that McCotter had provided “not a scintilla of evidence” that the timing of the indictment or the charging decisions had been politically motivated.“McCotter’s baseless assertion is unbecoming of his office,” the judge wrote.The judge also rejected McCotter’s argument that no investor had lost money because the securities involved had been repaid or remained current. McCotter had provided no evidence or legal standard explaining why the absence of financial loss justified dismissal. Garaufis noted that the lack of financial loss was immaterial to the FCPA and obstruction charges, neither of which required financial loss.What the judge found sufficient to dismiss Adani’s chargesThe court nevertheless found that one of McCotter’s “charge-specific” reasons was sufficient to dismiss the securities and fraud charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain.The reason concerned statements in Adani Green’s financial documents about its anti-bribery policies and compliance systems.Garaufis said the statements could constitute what US securities law describes as “inactionable puffery”, rather than actionable representations on which investors could reasonably have relied. These included statements about Adani Green’s commitment to anti-bribery practices, its “robust internal compliance measures”, its “zero tolerance policy for bribery and corruption” and its commitment to cooperate with government authorities.The judge said the language was sufficiently generic and vague that a court could conclude it was merely describing general compliance with legal obligations rather than making specific representations to investors.That possibility weakened the securities and wire-fraud case enough to constitute a “substantial reason” for dismissal under Rule 48(a), Garaufis held.The three counts were therefore dismissed with prejudice, ending those charges against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Jaain. The judge noted that the three defendants had consented to dismissal and that there was no indication of a prosecutorial “cat-and-mouse” effort to repeatedly indict them.Judge finds DOJ’s FCPA reasoning inadequateMcCotter had separately argued that the FCPA charge should be abandoned under the Trump administration’s revised enforcement policy.His July 4 letter said the alleged payments were made by Indian nationals working for Indian companies to the Indian government and that no US interests were implicated. He said the conduct did not involve criminal organisations, did not affect US companies, did not implicate national security and was not sufficiently egregious.Garaufis accepted part of that argument. He noted that the indictment contained no indication of cartels or transnational criminal organisations, which supported McCotter’s position on one factor in the Justice Department’s FCPA policy.But he rejected McCotter’s broader claim that the alleged bribery had no effect on US companies.The Justice Department’s own policy says that bribery of foreign officials to obtain lucrative contracts can “skew markets and disadvantage” US companies. Although the indictment does not identify a specific US company that was harmed, Garaufis noted that it alleges bribery of foreign officials to secure lucrative contracts. That, he wrote, “appears to undercut McCotter’s notion that the alleged conduct had no ‘effect on U.S. companies.’”The judge also found that McCotter’s argument did not adequately account for the national security implications of allegations involving energy and power. He noted that the Justice Department’s enforcement policy identifies critical infrastructure as a national security consideration, while the indictment alleges hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes involving energy and power.Garaufis also pointed to the alleged scale and sophistication of the conduct. The Justice Department policy identifies substantial bribe payments, sophisticated efforts to conceal bribes, fraudulent conduct and efforts to obstruct justice as factors indicating egregious misconduct. The judge noted that those descriptions closely tracked the allegations in the FCPA count.Similarly on the obstruction charge, Garaufis said McCotter had failed to address allegations that defendants had withheld key information from a US law firm conducting an internal investigation, destroyed or concealed evidence and falsely denied their participation in the alleged bribery scheme to FBI, Justice Department and SEC officials in New York.His treatment of those allegations was “at best insufficient to meet Rule 48(a)’s procedural requirements and at worst misleading”, the judge wrote.Garaufis also rejected McCotter’s assertion that the five non-appearing defendants were unlikely ever to appear in court. The judge said the record contained no information supporting the claim that they lived in places offering “no reasonable prospect of arrest” and noted that in his 26 years on the bench he had seen defendants appear more than 18 months after an indictment.Judge calls dismissal process “concerning” and “highly unusual”The judge’s criticism of the decision-making process followed disclosures about the extensive campaign by Adani’s new US defence team to persuade the Justice Department to abandon the case.Sullivan & Cromwell, led by Giuffra, submitted approximately 600 pages of legal arguments, factual material, expert testimony and presentations to the Justice Department over 10 weeks between February 3 and April 17.The material included a 118-page letter, a 12-page supplemental submission, a 95-page presentation to the Justice Department, a 151-page presentation to the SEC, four expert reports from US and Indian experts and a further 35-page presentation.McCotter told the court that he spent “well over a hundred hours” reviewing and debating the material, including numerous meetings with defence lawyers. After the securities charges became the subject of media reports, he also met several times with lawyers for the non-appearing defendants about the FCPA charges.Stating that he found the process troubling, the judge wrote, “As noted throughout this opinion, the irregularities in the decision to dismiss the Indictment are concerning”. McCotter, he said, appeared to have “eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment”.The fact that the decision was reached “largely in collaboration with defense counsel” and seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or the lawyers from the Justice Department, SEC and US Attorney’s Office who brought the case, “appears to be highly unusual”.The judge also explicitly recorded the connections between Adani’s defence team and the circle around US President Donald Trump.Adani had retained Sullivan & Cromwell in August 2025, and his lead lawyer, Robert Giuffra, also serves as President Trump’s personal attorney. The judge cited reporting about Giuffra’s connection to Trump and about Sullivan & Cromwell’s ties to the administration in laying out the chronology of the case.The judge also noted reports of meetings between Boris Epshteyn, a personal attorney and adviser to Trump, and the Adani defence team, as well as a reported meeting between Gautam Adani and Donald Trump Jr. while the criminal case was pending.Garaufis also said McCotter’s refusal to comply promptly with the court’s demand for factual support demonstrated “a lack of respect for the Judiciary as a co-equal branch” and unnecessarily forced the court to resolve the Rule 48(a) motion in stages.$10 billion investment offerGaraufis also addressed the proposed $10 billion investment in the United States that had featured in discussions between Adani’s lawyers and Justice Department officials.Gautam Adani had told the court that he was not aware of anything promised or accepted in connection with dismissal. But he acknowledged that his lawyers had suggested that his publicly stated intention to invest $10 billion in the US “might be part of a resolution” if that was what the DOJ or SEC wanted.In an “unsolicited” declaration, Robert Giuffra Jr., Adani’s lawyer, separately told the court that he had raised the proposed investment on two occasions as part of a possible resolution “on the merits” and as a way of promoting the US-India trade relationship.A May 11 email from US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. had rejected the proposal to resolve the criminal charges in part through the $10 billion investment, while saying that “other grounds for resolution” were being explored.Garaufis ultimately found that the investment was a “non-consideration” in McCotter’s decision to seek dismissal. But he separately addressed the defence’s repeated attempts to use monetary offers in resolving the case.“Taking no position on the ultimate propriety of Mr. Giuffra’s repeat attempts to resolve this bribery case with monetary offers,” the judge said he found Giuffra’s reliance on Justice Department guidelines for prosecuting business organisations unpersuasive because the case was against eight individuals, not a corporation.“It is up to the public to decide what effect offers of this kind have on the equal administration of justice and the rule of law,” Garaufis wrote. “Ultimately, ‘it is the public’s judgment, and not this [c]ourt’s, that truly matters’,” he added, quoting Judge Dale Ho’s 2025 ruling dismissing the corruption case against then-New York City mayor Eric Adams.The judge’s chronology also draws attention to Adani’s November 13, 2024 X post about the proposed $10 billion US investment.The post came a week after Donald Trump’s election victory and before the indictment was unsealed. It began, “Congratulations to @realDonaldTrump,” and said that as the partnership between India and the United States deepened, the Adani Group was committed to investing $10 billion in US energy security and resilient infrastructure projects, with the aim of creating up to 15,000 jobs. Garaufis specifically noted that the post was quoted only partially in both Adani’s affidavit and a declaration submitted by his lawyer. “Both omit Mr. Adani’s congratulations to and tagging of President Trump,” he wrote in a footnote.SEC enters final judgments against Adanis for $18 millionSeparately, the SEC’s civil case against Gautam and Sagar Adani was formally resolved on Monday through final consent judgments under which the two will pay a combined $18 million without admitting or denying the allegations.The SEC had accused the two men of making false and misleading statements to investors in connection with a 2021 Adani Green bond offering. The regulator alleged that the offering materials described the company’s anti-bribery and anti-corruption practices while the alleged bribery scheme was ongoing.Under the judgments, Gautam Adani is required to pay a $6 million civil penalty and Sagar Adani $12 million. The judgments also permanently enjoin both from violating specified provisions of the US securities laws. The penalties are to be paid within 30 days of entry of the judgments.The SEC’s original complaint, filed alongside the criminal case in November 2024, alleged that Gautam and Sagar Adani had participated in a scheme involving the payment or promise of hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to secure energy-purchase commitments that would benefit Adani Green and Azure Power. It also alleged that Adani Green raised $750 million through the 2021 bond offering, including more than $175 million from US investors.Adani Enterprises had earlier agreed in May to pay $275 million to settle allegations by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over imports of Iranian-origin liquefied petroleum gas.