Adani bribery case: No request for assistance from U.S. on Adani matter, says Law Ministry

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The Union government denied receiving a request for assistance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to serve summons papers on Gautam Adani and others in the Adani v. SEC bribery case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. In response to a Right to Information response application by The Hindu, the Ministry of Law and Justice’s Department of Legal Affairs (DLA) said “No such request has been received till date,” as of February 21.

It is worth noting that The Hindu filed its RTI application on February 19, and the DLA sent the above response on March 3. The SEC has “charged Gautam Adani and [his nephew] Sagar Adani, executives of Adani Green Energy Ltd., and Cyril Cabanes, an executive of Azure Power Global Ltd., for conduct arising out of a massive bribery scheme,” the Commission said. This is a civil suit that runs parallel to another complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Mr. Adani and the Adani group have denied wrongdoing in the case.

The SEC had written to the judge hearing the case, Nicholas G. Garaufis, saying that it had reached out to the DLA to serve summons to Mr. Adani and other defendants under the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, also known as the Hague service convention. India and the U.S. are both signatories to the convention.

As such, the SEC was likely able to send the assistance request to serve summons on Mr. Adani in the case directly through the DLA. However, the DLA’s denial — that too a denial that it dates specifically to February 21, three days after the SEC’s letter to the judge — obscures whether the DLA has received the request, let alone acted on it. 

The SEC declined to comment when contacted by The Hindu. The Ministry of Law and Justice did not respond to a request for comment on whether or not it had received the application for assistance. An Adani group spokesperson did not respond to emailed queries.

Executive order

U.S. President Donald Trump on February 10 passed an Executive Order “pausing” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 1977, under which Mr. Adani and the others have been charged. The White House said in a statement pausing the foreign bribery law’s enforcement that its “overexpansive and unpredictable … enforcement” was actively harming “American economic competitiveness and, therefore, national security.”

It is unclear if the pause extends to matters where complaints have already been filed in courts. The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that the Adani group “revived plans for major investments in the U.S.,” and said unnamed sources close to the group harboured “expectations the cases against [Mr. Adani] would eventually collapse” following Mr. Trump’s actions against the FCPA.