Preet Bharara among 46 US attorneys asked to resign

New York, March 11 

Preet Bharara, a high-profile Indian-American federal prosecutor, who had an Indian diplomat arrested, has been asked to quit by US President Donald Trump’s administration in a sweeping ouster of holdovers from the previous administration.

Bharara and 45 other federal prosecutors, appointed by former President Barack Obama, were told on Friday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to submit their resignations.

Nicknamed the “Sheriff of Wall Street”, Bharara’s jurisdiction covered New York’s financial district, putting him in the limelight as he prosecuted more than 100 finance executives for criminal activities such as stock trading irregularities using insider information.

They included several Indians like Rajat Gupta, the former head of the consulting company McKinsey and a Goldman Sachs director, who served two years in jail for colluding with the Sri Lankan-American hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam in a stock market scam using insider information.

Even though Bharara could be reappointed, his inclusion in the list of all other Obama appointees has come as a surprise because after a meeting with Trump in November last year, he had told reporters that he had been asked to stay on as the federal prosecutor or the US district attorney.

Meanwhile, it was not clear if his resignation would be accepted immediately or he would be asked to stay on to complete some pending prosecutions. Chuck Schumer, a senior Democratic Party Senator, who had reportedly recommended to Trump to keep on Bharara, said in a statement that his ouster could jeopardise ongoing cases.

The Senate has to approve the appointment of the federal prosecutors, who are political appointees. Their deputies, who are usually career government lawyers, will temporarily hold the fort, according to Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores. Bharara has also prosecuted several New York politicians for corruption. The seniormost among them is State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, who was given a 12-year sentence for corruption.

Investigations involving New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio and close aides of Governor Andrew Cuomo by the Bharara’s office were in progress. Bharara, whose full name is Preetinder Singh Bharara, was born in Firozpur, Punjab, in 1968 and immigrated to the US when he was a child.

He sparked a diplomatic standoff between India and the US in 2013 when he had Devyani Khobragade, a Dalit Indian diplomat, arrested over allegations that she had made a false statement in the visa application for her maid.

Among his high-profile cases against banks, Citibank paid a $158 million fine to settle a case Bharara brought against it for misleading the government about loans. — IANS