Bharara on His Wealth, Prosecutions and ‘Pulp Fiction’

Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, has no plans to retire in the near future.

But as Mr. Bharara’s profile has risen with a number of prominent cases â€" including the recent criminal charges against SAC Capital Advisors â€" his future has become a topic of speculation on Wall Street. Will he move to a high-paying job in the private sector, as other public servants have done? Or does he not need the money?

Mr. Bharara is rumored to be independently wealthy, the result of an early investment in his younger brother’s company, Quidsi, the parent of Diapers.com and Soap.com, which was sold to Amazon.com for $540 million in 2010, as DealBook’s Peter Lattman noted at the DealBook conference on Tuesday.

Is that indeed true? Is he independently wealthy?

Mr. Bharara demurred. “Not compared to the people in this room,” he said, to a room full of business people.

While he did not discuss his own wealth directly, Mr. Bharara said his brother, Vinnie, tends to pay for dinner when they go out, ever since he “came into a little bit of cash.”

“I got it,” Vinnie Bharara said at a dinner recently, according to Preet.

In addition, the prosecutor touched on some familiar themes, such as the importance of holding institutions â€" and not just individuals â€" accountable for wrongdoing. He also discussed budget constraints, saying his office was in a hiring freeze.

As for his plans when he does retire, Mr. Bharara borrowed a line from “Pulp Fiction.”

“I’m going to walk the earth,” Mr. Bharara said, quoting Samuel L. Jackson’s character in the movie.

“Like Caine in ‘Kung Fu,’” the character says. “Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.”