Statute of Limitations Is Longer, Bharara Warns

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan has a message for financial wrongdoers: Don’t try to run out the clock.

Thanks to the Dodd-Frank Act, which turns three years old this month, prosecutors have more time to bring charges in securities fraud cases. The statute of limitations was increased to six years from five, noted Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, at a conference in Manhattan on Wednesday.

“People shouldn’t be waiting for time to run out. That’s not a good way to behave,” Mr. Bharara said at the Delivering Alpha conference, which is hosted by CNBC and Institutional Investor. “I don’t even wear a watch.”

Mr. Bharara, who was interviewed by CNBC’s Jim Cramer, suggested that prosecutors have plenty of avenues to pursue financial misdeeds. His office has already secured numerous convictions in a multiyear campaign to root out insider trading on Wall Street.

In recent months, federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. have intensified their investigation of SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund owned by Steven A. Cohen.

While Mr. Bharara declined to discuss specific cases, he touched on the importance of bringing charges against institutions. That may seem abstract compared with prosecuting individuals, but Mr. Bharara said there are times when it is called for.

“People need to understand that there are appropriate circumstances in which institutions are blameworthy also,” Mr. Bharara said, adding that institutions “can look the other way or allow malfeasance.”

Mr. Bharara, a keynote speaker at the conference, was returning after a memorable appearance last year, when he said to a financial industry crowd: “I just want to apologize in advance that I don’t have enough subpoenas for all of you.”

The jokes this year were kept to a minimum. But Mr. Bharara â€" who said, “I like to laugh; laughing is good for the soul” â€" did revisit the subpoena theme.

“I had a lot of subpoenas, actually,” he quipped. “But on the way over here I ran into like six corrupt politicians, so…”

A feature of the government’s crackdown on insider trading has been the use of wiretap evidence, with secretly recorded phone calls. That should instill fear in wrongdoers, Mr. Bharara, said, that any method of communication could come back to haunt them.

And yet, Mr. Cramer asked, what about other technologies? Like, say, Snapchat?

“Nobody should feel comfortable,” Mr. Bharara said, “no matter what method of communication they are used to.”