Bharara Calls for Heightened Awareness of Public Corruption

NYLJ/Rick Kopstein

Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara Friday urged New Yorkers to demand higher standards for politicians, asking them to imagine how they would build a system in which corruption could not flourish.

Delivering the keynote address at a forum on "Fighting Corruption in America and Abroad," sponsored by the Fordham Law School Law Review, Bharara said people should ask themselves how they would reform campaign finance, curb conflicts of interest, limit the outside income of their elected representatives and foster transparency.

Bharara's remarks came in the wake of his office's highest-profile public corruption prosecution. Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was indicted two weeks ago on charges that he received $4 million in kickbacks from law firms for doing political favors since 2002. The once-powerful Democrat has said he will be vindicated.

Lawyers for Silver claim Bharara's public statements about Silver's arrest and allegations of widespread corruption tainted the grand jury process and compromised the potential jury pool for trial (NYLJ, Feb. 25).

Silver's attorneys, Joel Cohen, counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and Steven Molo, a partner at MoloLamken, have asked Southern District Judge Valerie Caproni to dismiss the indictment. But on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Carrie Cohen, Howard Master, Andrew Goldstein and James McDonald answered that Bharara has completely complied with ethical restrictions, repeatedly emphasized that the charges against Silver were allegations, and said he has a duty to speak out on corruption and other matters of public concern as the leading federal law enforcement officer in the district (NYLJ, Mar. 6).

At the U.S. Attorney's office, "We've been aggressive in using every aspect of the law that we can," he said, including seeking forfeiture of pensions of convicted elected officials.

Bharara told his audience Friday that he couldn't speak about specific cases, but he responded to a question about whether he "had gone beyond the boundaries" of his office given the "very strong division between prosecution and policy making." Bharara said it is the natural province of lead prosecutors, the attorney general, district attorneys and U.S. attorneys to weigh in on issues as they prosecute cases.

Of corruption in Albany, Bharara said, "Obviously there's a problem and its a fairly pervasive one and we all need to be part of the solution."

A renewed commitment from the public was key to combatting cynicism, Bharara said, adding that letters to his office and his own experience have demonstrated that "people do care about politics, they're just turned off by it and they tune out. But when you begin to show them you can clean things up and hold people accountable, they will tune back in."

The "level of attention" on public corruption needs to rise, both through "the cases we've brought and in forums like this," Bharara said.

"Deterrence is an essential part of our mission," he said, adding that he does not speak in public on prosecutions so as to "excoriate and warn people who are committing crimes" but to empower "good and honorable and decent people" to speak up when they encounter corruption.

"Lots and lots of people, long before the FBI showed up," knew that something was wrong at places like Galleon Group, SAC Capital and Bernard Madoff's firm, Bharara said. "Good people who do nothing bear responsibility for the bad things that go on in institutions."