Preet Bharara
| Preet Bharara | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York | |
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In office August 13, 2009 – March 11, 2017 |
|
| President |
Barack Obama Donald Trump |
| Preceded by | Lev Dassin (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Joon H. Kim (acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Preetinder Singh Bharara October 13, 1968 Firozpur, Punjab, India |
| Residence | Westchester County, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater |
Harvard University Columbia Law School |
Preetinder Singh "Preet" Bharara (born October 13, 1968) is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. As U.S. Attorney, Bharara earned a reputation of a "crusader" prosecutor who for seven years 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.
Under Bharara, federal prosecutors also conducted public corruption investigations against Democratic and Republican officials, most notable securing convictions against the Speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and the Majority Leader of the State Senate, Dean Skelos. One of Bharara's chief adversaries was Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom Bharara's office investigated. Under Bharara, the U.S. Attorney's office was also known for its terrorism prosecutions and civil rights cases. Bharara's office had international reach, pursuing defendants located in many countries outside the United States.
On March 11, 2017, he was fired—after refusing to resign—as a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' request for all remaining 46 US Attorneys appointed during President Obama's administration to resign. On April 1, 2017, Bharara joined the NYU School of Law faculty as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence.
Bharara was born in 1968 in Firozpur, Punjab, India, to a Sikh father and Hindu mother. His parents immigrated to the United States in 1970, and he grew up in Eatontown in suburban Monmouth County, New Jersey and attended Ranney School in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, where he graduated as valedictorian in 1986. He received his B.A magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1990 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1993, where he was a member of the Columbia Law Review.
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