Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara continues to lock horns with a hedge fund executive who claims his company was forced to close its doors after it was wrongly raided as part of the prosecutor’s long-running probe of insider trading on Wall Street.
The lawman has signaled he will ask an appeals court to overturn a lower court judge’s decision to keep the hedge fund executive’s law suit against Bharara and others alive, court papers reveal.
The executive, David Ganek, sued Bharara and a dozen other officials, including FBI agents, in February 2015 over the “reckless” raid, claiming it led to the shuttering of his $4 billion Level Global firm.
Bharara asked Judge William H. Pauley III to dismiss the case. The federal judge in March denied the request, leading to Friday’s appeal.
If the case is not dismissed, it could mean Bharara and other government officials named in Ganek’s suit could be deposed.
Ganek, who was the co-founder of the now-defunct hedge fund Level Global, accused the feds of “fabricating” insider-trading evidence to obtain a search warrant.
Fortunes have changed for some associated with Level Global. Anthony Chiasson, one of the traders at the center of the insider-trading accusation, was vindicated last year after the Supreme Court let a lower court’s exoneration stand.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a rare settlement, also refunded Level Global’s $21.5 million penalty.
“It’s disappointing the US Attorney is trying to delay a quest for truth,” Ganek said in a statement to The Post. “His replacement a year from now will inevitably decide the public has a right to know how this landmark case of his went awry.
Bharara’s office declined to comment, but experts said an appeal could include an argument that the government should be immune from such suits.
“They’ve got an argument,” said Robert Ray, a law partner with Fox Rothschild.
With Kaja Whitehouse