A federal judge on Friday ordered prosecutors to explain their decision to abandon bribery-related charges against India’s richest man, Gautam Adani, a move that came after the billionaire’s lawyer told the Justice Department his client could invest $10 billion in the United States if the case were dropped.
Federal prosecutors had offered no explanation for the move, other than that they had chosen “not to devote further resources” to the case. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis, said in his order that the reasoning was “terse” and “bland.” He directed prosecutors to provide “sufficient factual support” as to why the case should be abandoned.
The $10 billion offer was not cited as a justification in the prosecutors’ letter seeking to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning that the charges could not be brought again. It was signed by Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, and R. Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general. Days after the letter was filed, two Justice Department lawyers withdrew from the case, signaling internal pushback over the move.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment. Robert J. Giuffra Jr., a lawyer for Mr. Adani, declined to comment.
Though federal judges, not prosecutors, formally dismiss criminal charges, they have little ability under the law to deny a request from the government to drop them. But increasingly, experts say, judges have questioned the rationale behind such decisions. And across the country, judges have shown increased skepticism toward the Justice Department’s handling of cases during the second Trump administration.
Last year, the Justice Department moved to dismiss federal bribery charges against Eric Adams, then the mayor of New York City. The judge overseeing the case, Dale E. Ho, called the prosecutors’ rationale — that it was interfering with Mr. Adams’s ability to carry out President Trump’s immigration agenda — “unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep” when he ultimately dismissed the case in April 2025.
“Judges are increasingly pushing back and using that power to explore the nonprosecution decisions,” said Thomas Frampton, a professor of law at George Washington University.
Mr. Adani is a titan of industry in India and a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr. Adani’s conglomerate, the Adani Group, has businesses in mining, shipping, manufacturing and more, and his fortune has grown exponentially with India’s rise as a global economic power.
Along with seven other co-defendants, Mr. Adani was indicted in November 2024, during the last weeks of the Biden administration. Prosecutors said Mr. Adani and his co-defendants had paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials to secure lucrative solar contracts for his renewable energy company, Adani Green Energy.
Even though the bribes were paid in India, prosecutors said, the company was subject to U.S. law, as it had sought investments from people in the United States. At the time, prosecutors called the alleged bribery scheme “corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”
The defendants were not living in the United States at the time and never entered a plea, but Mr. Adani consistently denied the accusations. Last summer, he hired a legal team led by Mr. Giuffra, who is a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump and is co-chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm.
During a private meeting at the Justice Department in Washington earlier this year, Mr. Giuffra said that Mr. Adani could invest $10 billion in the United States if the charges were dropped, The New York Times has previously reported. The offer echoed a promise Mr. Adani made on social media after Mr. Trump won in 2024.
His lawyers have also argued that the indictment did not describe a crime. The alleged payments, they have written in court filings, did not harm U.S. competitors.
The same day that prosecutors filed their motion to dismiss, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Mr. Adani and his nephew, a co-defendant, would pay an $18 million fine to resolve a parallel civil case. The Treasury Department also announced it had reached a $275 million settlement with Adani Enterprises Limited to resolve a separate investigation.
In a filing earlier this week, lawyers for Mr. Adani wrote that the Justice Department’s move to drop the case “reflects its careful consideration of the indictment’s legal and factual weaknesses.”
Yet the move has prompted scrutiny from some lawmakers on Capitol Hill. This month, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. attorney general, that the decision “raises serious questions about corruption under President Trump.”
William K. Rashbaum and Ben Protess contributed reporting.
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