NRI, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, uncover inside trading fraud

• 14 people charged Thursday in a widening $53 million insider trading case
• Last month with the arrests of Galleon Group founder and hedge fund operator
  Raj Rajaratnam and five others.

 

WASHINGTON, DC, Nov. 05, 2009

On Thursday, Fourteen people charged including two attorneys and Wall Street professionals in a $53 million insider trading case that has snared one of America's richest men and shown white collar suspects to be using the cover-up tactics of drug dealers.

Two weeks after taking office, Mr. Bharara charged Hassan Nemazee, a prominent Democratic Party fund-raiser with ties to Mr. Bharara's former boss, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, with defrauding several banks out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. Nemazee has pleaded not guilty.

Last month, the actions raise to 20 the number of people who have been charged in the case first disclosed last month with the arrests of Galleon Group founder and hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam and five others.

Preet Bharara said:

• Today the alarm bells have only grown louder
• The defendants borrowed a "page from the drug dealer's play book" by using anonymous hard-to-trace prepaid cell phones to dodge detection by law enforcement. He said they also discussed falsifying company files to make it appear trades weren't based on secrets.
• When sophisticated business people begin to adopt the methods of common criminals, we have no choice but to treat them as such
• Total profits alleged by prosecutors was $40 million while the Securities and Exchange Commission raised the total to $53 million, saying it includes millions in profits not described in the criminal complaints.

He also very concerned about mortgage fraud and cybercrimes.am in the years afterward.

• Preetinder S. Bharara was born in Ferozepur, India.He was an infant when his parents immigrated to the United States in 1970.
• He grew up in Monmouth County, N.J.
• He graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993.
• He worked for several weeks in Mark Green’s campaign
• His father, a Sikh, and his mother, who was Hindu, were born in what is now Pakistan
• His wife’s father, a Muslim, moved, from the Indian side into Pakistan
• His wife’s mother was born in Palestine, after her father, who was Jewish, escaped with his family from Nazi Germany.

Preet Bharara, chief counsel to Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY). appointed U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York by Obama on May 15, 2009

• He helped to uncover political maneuverings by the Justice Department in the administration of President George W. Bush.
• He served as the chief counsel to Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, played a major role in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the firings of United States attorneys around the country.
• Mr. Bharara will oversee more than 200 lawyers who handle some of the country’s most prominent cases, like the prosecution of Bernard L. Madoff for his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.