U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Diya TV) — Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, made Indian headlines in 2013 when he led the prosecution against an Indian consular employee. Divyani Khobragade’s detention and treatment by U.S. Marshals sparked diplomatic drama between the nation and India, and Bharara found himself smack in the middle of the happenings — Indian’s vowed to disown Bharara for his initiating action against an Indian diplomat, which they argued was a breach of international law.

Two years later, Bharara is in the limelight again, only this time for much different reasons — he is being hailed as a hero by hundreds of thousands of Turks for arresting an Iranian-born Turkish businessman, Reza Zarrab, on charges of helping the Iranian government evade economic sanctions and launder hundreds of millions of dollars in Turkey and around the globe. Bharara’s celebrity status was felt instantly, his Twitter account shot up from 8,010 followers to 272,000. His two tweets regarding Zarrab’s arrest were retweeted more than 62,000 times and liked by nearly 100,000 more.

Zarrab was vacationing stateside in Miami when he was apprehended — he is regarded as a key figure in the huge graft scandal that engulfed Recep Tayyip Erdogan-led Turkish government in 2013. He was arrested for bribing senior officials of the government and some very close associates of Prime Minister Erdogan to facilitate his dubious activities that has now landed him in American jail.

erdogan-body_032816010039Erdogan has insisted on Zarrab’s innocence and has gone the extra mile in an attempt to protect him. Flipping the judiciary in the country upside down, Erdogan jailed thousands of police officers and prosecutors, imploding the independence of state institutions and tossing democracy out the window by passing laws to subjugate the judicial system. As a result, the case against Zarrab was dropped. Adding insult to injury, Zarrab was awarded the top exporter prize by the Turkish Exporters Assembly, a pro-business group, in June of last year.