Legal experts said the US Department of Justice’s extraordinary decision to abandon its criminal case against Gautam Adani has significantly strengthened the prospects of a final dismissal, with several lawyers arguing the court’s role is limited and the case suffered from fundamental jurisdictional and evidentiary weaknesses.
The comments came a day after the DOJ submitted a sharply worded filing defending its request to dismiss all charges with prejudice against Adani and seven other defendants. The department argued the prosecution was a “foreign case,” said investors had lost “not a single penny,” and declared that the securities charges “should never have been brought.”
Benjamin Gianforti, partner at Wollmuth, Maher and Deutsch, said the DOJ’s expanded explanation appeared sufficient to address concerns raised by Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who had earlier criticised the government’s original dismissal request as “terse, bland, and conclusory.” While cautioning that “I don’t know what this judge will do,” Benjamin said the “additional detail should be sufficient” given the court’s limited role.
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Bombay High Court Senior Advocate Amit Desai said he did not view the DOJ’s response as unusual, arguing that judicial scrutiny of prosecutorial withdrawal decisions is inherently narrow. “The role of the court is very limited,” Desai said, describing the filing as an attempt to “restrict the court’s jurisdiction to the limits of its judicial review and nothing more.”
The DOJ filing itself repeatedly emphasised that the allegations centred on Indian companies, Indian officials and Indian contracts. In one of its strongest passages, the department wrote that “India can better manage its internal systems than can prosecutors in Brooklyn and Washington.”
Supreme Court lawyer Swapnil Kothari took an even stronger view, calling the matter “absolutely worthless” and arguing that it “should not have been brought in the first place.” According to Kothari, the case suffered from both jurisdictional and evidentiary problems, making it unlikely that the court would ultimately resist the DOJ’s request for dismissal.
That assessment closely mirrors the DOJ’s own conclusion. The department told the court that the alleged misconduct occurred almost entirely in India, that key evidence and witnesses were overseas, and that the securities fraud theory faced substantial legal risks. It also noted that all of the securities involved had either been repaid or continued to be serviced, meaning investors suffered no losses.
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Market participants said the development could help remove a long-standing legal overhang for the Adani Group. Vijay Chopra, managing director and chief executive officer of Enoch Ventures, said investors could become “quite open to invest” if the uncertainty surrounding the case fades, while Fort Capital’s Parag Thakkar said the DOJ had taken a “firm stance in favor of Adani Group.” The final decision now rests with Judge Garaufis. Legal experts broadly agree that the DOJ’s unusually forceful defence of dismissal has made the path toward ending the case significantly clearer.
(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)
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