America
Preet Bharara: World's sheriff or ambitious manipulator?
By
By Arun KumarWashington, April 1
The enviable record of
Wall Street's Indian-American prosecutor Preet Bhrara, known in India
for his dogged prosecution of an Indian diplomat, has put him in the
limelight, but some have also questioned his methods.
Time
magazine put him on the cover and Vanity Fair described him as "Wall
Street's most fearsome foe". recalled the Washington Post while calling
him as "The brash New York prosecutor who's indicting left and right."
Calling
Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, as "the
most powerful prosecutor in the country", the influential US daily said
his "aggressive prosecutions are earning him a reputation as a fiercely
effective and limelight-loving figure."
"No target is apparently
too big for him," said the Post noting he is currently investigating
the National Football League over painkiller abuses and New York's
Democratic Governor Andrew M. Cuomo over the closure of an ethics
commission.
Bharara's team of elite prosecutors, many of whom
left seven-figure careers in white-shoe firms to work with him, have
pursued investigations in over 40 countries, it said.
A naturalised citizen, Bharara was born in Firozpur, India, in 1968 and came to the US as a 2-year-old with his parents.
But
that "did not prevent him from arresting and charging India's deputy
consul general, Devyani Khobragade, for mistreatment of a domestic
worker last year," the Post said.
"Everyone should understand
that our motivation is always to do the right thing, and we don't pull
our punches, and we don't care who you are," Bharara was quoted as
saying.
Khobragade, whose Dec 2013 arrest for visa fraud and
underpaying her housekeeper, touched off a major diplomatic row, "was a
criminal," according to Bharara as cited by the Post.
Bharara was
nominated in 2009 by President Barack Obama at the age of 40. Since
then, he has indicted 17 prominent New York politicians for malfeasance -
10 of them Democrats, according to the Post.
But Bharara may
have also brought some cases that criminalized non-criminal behaviour,
the daily said noting his office won 85 straight convictions for insider
trading, by arguing that basically anyone who trades on any non-public
information commits a crime.
The Wall Street Journal in a recent
editorial questioned "Preet Bharara's Methods" asking, "Did the US
Attorney's office fabricate evidence to smear a Wall Street target?"
Bharara,
it noted, is being sued by financier David Ganek for destroying his
business and depriving him of due process and other constitutional
rights.
"Bharara has become a political celebrity for his
aggressive tactics and portrait of US finance as akin to organized
crime," it said. "Yet in his zeal he has often jettisoned his obligation
to fairness."
"Bharara isn't the first ambitious prosecutor to
abuse his discretion, but perhaps there will be fewer in the future if
Ganek succeeds. Discovery would be educational," the Journal concluded.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])