The administration of United States President Donald Trump has moved to dismiss criminal fraud charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani in a case where he is accused of bribing Indian officials for as much as $265m to secure contracts and lying to US investors to land a solar energy project in India, allegations that his company has long denied.
The case was dropped by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) after Adani pledged a $10bn investment in the US.
“The Department of Justice has reviewed this case and has decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants,” the DOJ said in a short letter sent to Judge Nicholas Garaufis at the US District Court in the Eastern District of New York.
A judge must still sign off on the DOJ’s request.
The government dropping the case comes amid recent changes in Adani’s legal team. The billionaire, the 17th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $108bn according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, appointed to his legal team Robert J Giuffra Jr, who also happens to be one of US President Donald Trump’s personal attorneys, according to reporting from The New York Times last week.
Giuffra Jr said that Adani would pledge an investment of $10bn in the US, which, according to the newspaper, would bring in 15,000 jobs. He also stressed, according to the paper, that the billionaire denied the allegations.
Source: Aljazeera
