NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) – The top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn said he had no basis to dispute the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to abandon its prosecution of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, but stopped short of saying whether he agreed with dismissing the fraud and bribery case.
In a letter on Friday to the judge overseeing the case, U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said he was “not the decisionmaker” behind dropping the case, and had no basis to believe the reasons advanced by his supervisor Trent McCotter, a top Justice Department official, were not the “real grounds” for a dismissal.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis had asked Nocella to explain whether he agreed or disagreed with McCotter’s reasons for dropping the Adani case, and whether there were other bases for doing so.
Nocella’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Cynthia Osterman)
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