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With the US Department of Justice defending its decision to seek the dismissal of its case against Gautam Adani and others, legal experts have weighed in to say that the reply is sufficient and raises questions on the quality of evidence presented to bring the case.
Benjamin A. Gianforti, US based lawyer, Partner at WMD Law and former Assistant U.S. Attorney says the reply presented by the DoJ is sufficient for the judge's purposes. "My take on the letter is that this is probably more than sufficient for the judge's purposes, because it does go into some detail about all the reasons why the department decided to walk away from this case, everything from, you know, it being inconsistent with current priorities to concerns about the quality of the evidence, all these things, so even though they, they spent the first part of the letter sort of attacking the judge for even asking for this information. They did provide, I think, more than enough information for the judge to get comfortable that this case is being dismissed for appropriate reasons. And so, I mean, look, the judge can kind of do whatever he wants, but you know, I don't think I think the government has provided enough information for the judge to make the decision at this point," he said. The US Department of Justice in its reply said that forcing prosecutors to spell out their reasoning in detail could undermine constitutional authority over prosecutorial decisions. Prosecutors say the alleged case took place in India and it was not appropriate for US prosecutors to get into it. "The way that I look at this prosecution is that you know reasonable minds can differ about whether this prosecution should have been brought at all. I mean, it is, it is just true that when an administration changes in this country, that priorities will, will change, and the this administration, you know, decided to dial back its enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for instance, which punishes foreign bribery if there are sufficient US connections for that conduct, and again, reasonable minds can differ about how much and how aggressively we should be enforcing any particular set of laws, so I think that DOJ was completely within its rights to decide to not pursue this prosecution anymore, and they seem to have laid out a number of good reasons why they decided to walk away from it right now," Benjamin A. Gianforti told ANI. "They're essentially saying that look, Judge, if you make us disclose all of our internal decision making about whether to pursue prosecutions or not, that's going to make it less likely that we're going to actually reassess prosecutions and potentially walk away from them in the future...What DOJ is saying, that it is sort of in defendants' interest to let internal deliberations remain private and privileged, but I'm not even sure that was necessarily how much detail that the court was even asking for here," he added. The US DoJ in its reply had argued that the case was weak due to evidentiary problems. It further said that most of the alleged evidence was based in India making US prosecution difficult. "There are certainly circumstances where the Department of Justice will bring prosecutions against individuals that it is very unlikely that they will ever apprehend, so you know, for instance, you might have an oligarch sitting in Russia that they charge with criminal offenses when they have no realistic prospect of ever actually putting their hands on that person and arresting them. There are still good reasons to bring prosecutions like that, if it's an important priority for the Department of Justice, or if there is clear evidence of a crime being committed," Benjamin A. Gianforti told ANI. The case against Gautam Adani and others had alleged a bribery scheme linked to solar power contracts in India which further allegedly misled US investors. In May this year the US DoJ had moved to dismiss these charges following which the US Court of the Eastern District of New York has sought a reply from the DoJ. With that reply cementing the US DoJ's position, legal experts argue that teh the Judge in all likelihood would back the DoJ stand. (ANI)
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