Preet Bharara

Preetinder Singh Bharara (born October 13, 1968) is an American lawyer who served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. As a U.S. Attorney, Bharara earned a reputation of a "crusader" prosecutor. According to The New York Times, during his tenure he was one of "the nation's most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime." Under Bharara, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York prosecuted nearly 100 Wall Street executives for insider trading and other offenses. He reached historic settlements and fines with the four largest banks in the United States, and closed multibillion-dollar hedge funds for activities including insider trading. During Bharara's tenure, federal prosecutors also conducted investigations against Democratic and Republican officials, most notably securing convictions against the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and the Majority Leader of the State Senate, Dean Skelos Bharara's office investigated Governor Andrew Cuomo; it was also known for its terrorism prosecutions and civil rights cases. It had international reach, pursuing defendants located in many countries outside the United States. On March 11, 2017, Bharara was fired after he refused to follow Attorney General Jeff Sessions's request for all remaining 46 U.S. Attorneys appointed during Barack Obama's presidency to resign. On April 1, 2017, Bharara joined the New York University School of Law faculty as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence.