as u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, a big part of preet bharara<u+2019>s job is keeping companies honest<u+2014>and he<u+2019>s made a name for himself with very high-profile prosecutions. the wall street journal<u+2019>s rebecca blumenstein spoke with mr. bharara about the role of ceos in setting corporate ethics, his own style of prosecution and his possible future under donald trump. here are edited excerpts of the discussion. ms. blumenstein: given that part of your job involves prosecuting companies and occasionally ceos, what are you doing talking to a room full of ceos? mr. bharara: i have come to really love the sound of nervous laughter. ms. blumenstein: you talk a lot about the importance of culture in companies. why is it so important? mr. bharara: in addition to being the chief federal law-enforcement officer in manhattan, i<u+2019>m sort of the ceo of my institution. i have to make decisions, every day, about how we allocate our resources, who we promote, what our priorities are. for my office to succeed and to do well, i have to care about culture a lot. no ceo worth his or her salt would think otherwise. ms. blumenstein: every company has rules, all sorts of best practices. what is a specific role of a ceo? mr. bharara: it<u+2019>s a clich<u+00e9> for everyone in the room to talk about tone at the top. and there<u+2019>s a reason some things are clich<u+00e9>s. they matter. you need to have a compliance department. but you also need a charter for the place, so that people understand not just that you<u+2019>re supposed to follow these particular rules because the cfpb or the ftc or whoever cares about them. when a new employee comes in does someone say, <u+201c>you should understand, apart from the regulations and the compliance policy, we don<u+2019>t lie. we don<u+2019>t cheat. we don<u+2019>t steal. if you do, you<u+2019>re out.<u+201d> ms. blumenstein: you faced criticism for overreaching on some insider-trading cases and also a sense of prosecuting some of them in the media. mr. bharara: the vast majority of insider-trading cases we brought have resulted in convictions, and those convictions were upheld on appeal. there<u+2019>s a small subset of cases we argued that the appeals court in new york got wrong. ms. blumenstein: what about trying cases in the press? mr. bharara: one first responsibility is to make sure that anybody you charge gets a fair trial. i have never spoken anywhere outside of the four corners of the complaint or the indictment. but when you have a spate of problems, for example, if you have a gang problem in newburgh, new york, which we have had, i talk about it. when you have a prescription-pill problem that is killing more people than traffic accidents and guns these days, and more people are oding from prescription pills and dying than from cocaine and, i think, heroin combined, then you talk about that problem. when you have assemblymen and senators in my home state of new york going to prison at an alarming rate, then you talk about the problem. because part of the job is not just to hold people accountable. it<u+2019>s also to deter, to raise public awareness. i get invited to speak to groups like this but also to doctor and business students because people have some interest in knowing how we think about prosecution, what we think the problems are, and how maybe the good people can help to solve those problems. i speak at every business school around. and i<u+2019>ve been doing it for a number of years. i go to harvard business school. every february, for five or six years running, i speak to the first-year class. i sit in on the day when they talk about insider trading. then we talk more broadly about ethics and integrity and how they should think about conducting themselves to avoid problems. and i say, <u+201c>look, i<u+2019>m here. it<u+2019>s not just a scared-straight program for white-collar people,<u+201d> although it<u+2019>s a little bit that. <u+201c>and i<u+2019>m not just directing my words to the ears of the two or three of you at harvard business school who, statistically speaking, are likely to commit serious securities fraud, although i know who you are.<u+201d> it<u+2019>s more to direct my words to the ears of the vast majority of people who have integrity, who are honest, who want to do the right thing. ms. blumenstein: would you be interested in a position in the trump administration? mr. bharara: i was going to put in for secretary of state. ms. blumenstein: that might be taken. but seriously, your interests, could they be aligned? mr. bharara: i do my job. i love my job. it<u+2019>s the best job i ever had. and it<u+2019>s probably the best job i will ever have. and i serve at the pleasure of the president. that<u+2019>s true of president obama. that will be true of president trump. and if and when a president decides that they want to replace me, i<u+2019>ll ride off into the sunset. i don<u+2019>t get paid to serve the president. i get paid to serve the public and what i think is in the interest of justice, no matter who the president is. part of the election, on both sides, was about whether systems are rigged. and i can tell you, from cases we have brought, there<u+2019>s a lot that<u+2019>s rigged on the street and in politics. and the people in my office, in an apolitical way, spend day after day after day doing those kinds of cases. i would like to think that the level of aggressiveness in law enforcement will remain the same, when you<u+2019>re talking about things like keeping the markets fair and government honest. i don<u+2019>t foresee any departure from that, unless i<u+2019>m missing something big. write to reports@wsj.com
keeping corporate executives honest - wsj
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