A United States judge on Friday ordered the US Department of Justice to justify its decision to drop fraud charges against Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani, Reuters reported.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis at the US District Court in the Eastern District of New York declined to rule immediately on a request filed by Gautam Adani’s lawyers to dismiss the case. The court gave the prosecutors time till July 13 to submit more information to support their decision to drop the charges.

“The government’s terse, ​bland and conclusory statement affords the court neither a sufficient basis to reach any conclusion, nor the opportunity to conduct ​any analysis of the government's request for dismissal,” Reuters quoted Garaufis as having said.

The US authorities had in November 2024 indicted Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani for allegedly orchestrating a $265 million fraud scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, and then misrepresenting the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the US.

The details of the alleged bribes were concealed to secure financing, the US justice department had claimed.

The Adani Group has denied the allegations. In a stock exchange filing in November 2024, the conglomerate said that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had been charged in the US for securities fraud, not bribery.

On May 18, the Donald Trump administration asked the court to dismiss the fraud charges against Gautam Adani.

The justice department had told Garaufis that it had decided, “in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants”.

For the charges to be dropped, Garaufis must approve the request.

The request to drop the charges came days after reports said that Gautam Adani’s lawyers had told the justice department that he would invest $10 billion in the country’s economy and help create 15,000 jobs if the charges against him were dropped.

Earlier this month, two Democratic senators alleged that the reported proposal by Gautam Adani to invest in the US economy if the fraud charges against him are dropped appeared to be an “egregious quid pro quo offer”.

On May 14, The New York Times reported that the justice department was planning to drop the charges against Gautam Adani after he hired a legal team led by Robert J Giuffra Jr, one of US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

The newspaper reported that Giuffra met officials at the justice department’s headquarters in Washington in April. He presented about 100 slides arguing that the prosecutors lacked evidence and jurisdiction in the matter, The New York Times quoted unidentified persons familiar with the meeting as saying.

One slide allegedly made an offer that Gautam Adani would make investments in the US, according to the newspaper.

Even if the criminal charges are dropped, Gautam Adani is still expected to pay financial penalties, the US newspaper quoted persons aware of the case as saying.

During the same meeting, the lawyer also sought to resolve a parallel civil case filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against Gautam Adani, The New York Times had reported.

On May 14, the US markets regulator reached a settlement with Gautam Adani in the matter, the Financial Times reported. As part of this settlement, Gautam Adani agreed to pay $6 million and Sagar Adani $12 million.

Adani Green Energy, a subsidiary of the Adani Group, had told stock exchanges on May 15 that the “company is not a party to this proceeding, and no charges have been brought against it”.

However, the company confirmed that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had agreed to the “payment of a civil penalty”, while stating that the decision was made “without admitting or denying the allegations made in the civil complaint”.

The final judgement of the US Eastern District Court of New York is awaited in the matter, the company had said.

On May 18, the US Department of Treasury ‌also said that Adani Enterprises had agreed to pay $275 million to settle its potential civil liability for alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of the Adani Group.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.