Washington, May 22 (IANS). Indian-American business leaders and policy experts on Friday welcomed the closure of the case against Adani Group in the US. He says the case was outside the jurisdiction of US law and there was no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing.
Talking to news agency IANS, he said that this decision will give impetus to India-US economic relations again and will increase the confidence of investors in Indian companies operating globally.
Speaking to IANS, Dr. Mukesh Aghi, President and CEO of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, said that India-US relations are extremely important both strategically and economically and resolution of the Adani Group issue was necessary so that Indian companies can get easy access to international capital markets.
“When you look at this case, it was completely outside the jurisdiction of US law. So we wondered why it was imposed on an Indian company,” he said.
Aghi further told IANS, “Secondly, there was no evidence of bribery. Only some conjectures were made and one cannot proceed on the basis of mere conjectures unless there is concrete evidence.”
He said that the most important thing is that no investor, especially American investors, lost any money. Therefore, we feel that this decision of the US Justice Department was right and with this the relations between the two countries will again move in the right direction.
Expressing similar opinion, Democrat leader Ajay Jain Bhutoria, who played an advisory role in former US President Joe Biden’s White House, said that the prosecution ultimately could not prove its allegations.
He said, “I can’t say whether the case was politically motivated or not, because it was a judicial matter going on in the court. But the prosecutors could not prove their allegations and they did not have enough evidence to pursue the case.”
Bhutoria said, “For many years, the MAGA movement has been spreading the narrow mind that India and Indian-Americans are snatching American jobs through arrangements like H-1B visa. But Adani Group’s $10 billion investment completely shatters this misconception.”
He said that this will bring about a major change in the perception of the Indian corporate world in America and will prove that Indian capital can become one of the major forces driving America’s domestic economic growth.
–IANS
DBP