From morally leukemic billionaires to Chinese gangland shooters, bare-knuckle traders and rainmaking political bosses, Preet Bharara has indicted them all – including some members of the Democratic Party that appointed him as the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A naturalised citizen, Bharara was born in the northwestern Indian city of Firozpur in 1968 and migrated to the US as a two-year-old with his parents. His father moved the family to Buffalo after he was granted a fellowship to practice medicine, according to the New Yorker. They eventually settled in New Jersey, and Bharara went on to attend Harvard and then Columbia Law School.

Bharara graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993, spent several years at private firms, and then, from 2000 to 2005, served as an Assistant US Attorney in Manhattan. On leaving his Manhattan post, he made an unusual choice for a promising young lawyer – instead of becoming a partner at a law firm, he went to Washington to work for Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat. Schumer chaired the Judiciary Committee’s oversight subcommittee, and Bharara was the top aide on his staff. In 2009, Bharara was nominated by President Barack Obama, at the age of 40, to become the attorney for the Southern District of New York - thanks to an endorsement by Schumer.

His Indian heritage made him a unique target for critics, although it did not prevent him from arresting and charging India’s deputy consul general, Devyani Khobragade, for mistreatment of a domestic worker. Indian diplomats reacted with outrage, calling him a “self-loathing” traitor to his heritage, and an embarrassed State Department had to bail out Khobragade with diplomatic immunity.

“Everyone should understand that our motivation is always to do the right thing, and we don’t pull our punches, and we don’t care who you are,” Bharara told the Washington Post afterwards, adding: “There are too many people who think that if you are powerful and you are rich then you get a bye, and you get treated with kid gloves… That’s not true here, and we work really hard to make sure people know that’s not true.”

Nothing has earned Bharara more mixed congratulation and criticism than his very public war on political corruption. Along with his bipartisan prosecutions, Bharara developed a reputation for being tough on insider trading, although he was criticised for the lack of prosecutions that followed the financial crisis. Bharara defended himself, saying it was far harder to jail independent business executives because they had consulted attorneys every step of the way. In leaving office, Bharara follows in the footsteps of predecessors like Rudy Giuliani and Tom Dewey in creating as much of a political as a prosecutorial profile during his eight years.

Once, he opened a speaking engagement before a roomful of financial traders by saying, “I just want to apologize in advance that I don’t have enough subpoenas for all of you.” As the audience broke out in laughter, he said, “I’m just kidding.” Pause. “I do have enough.”

Preet Bharara earned a reputation as a formidable “Sheriff of Wall Street” for his high-profile prosecutions of white-collar criminals between 2009 and 2017. From CEOs and arms dealers to banks, terrorists and hackers, he won cases against every conceivable adversary. Here is a look at the 9 key milestones in his career:

1. In November 2016, Bharara’s office arrested a former Valeant executive and former Philidor CEO on charges of engaging in a multi-million dollar fraud and kickback scheme.

2. In 2015, Bharara’s office charged three men accused of helping to run a sprawling series of hacking and fraud schemes, including a huge 2014 attack against JPMorgan Chase & Co, that generated hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profit, according to Reuters.

3. After Bharara brought felony charges against JPMorgan Chase in 2014, the bank paid $1.7 billion (Dh6.2 billion) to settle charges that it failed to act against Bernie Madoff’s suspicious activities at the height of his Ponzi scheme. The settlement was the largest forfeiture demanded from a bank in US history, according to Reuters.

4. In March 2014, Bharara’s office charged Toyota with one count of wire fraud for lying to customers about safety issues with Toyota-manufactured cars. Toyota eventually paid out a $1.2 billion fine, which was the largest criminal penalty ever doled out to an automaker.

5. In one of his most high-profile cases as a federal prosecutor, Bharara in 2013 unveiled criminal fraud charges against billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LP, capping a nearly seven-year probe into one of Wall Street’s most renowned firms. The parties eventually reached a $1.8 billion settlement, the largest ever for insider trading, and the firm agreed to shut its doors.

6. In December 2013, Devyani Khobragade, then the Deputy Consul General of the Consulate General of India in New York City, was charged by Bharara with committing visa fraud and providing false statements in order to gain entry to the US for Sangeeta Richard, a woman of Indian nationality, for employment as a domestic worker for Khobragade in New York. She was additionally charged with failing to pay the domestic worker a minimum wage. Khobragade was arrested the next day by US federal law enforcement authorities and subjected to a body-cavity search. Her arrest led to a major diplomatic standoff between India and the United States.

7. In 2012, Bharara brought charges against Mathew Martoma. Martoma, who worked for CR Intrinsic Investors in Stamford, a unit of SAC Capital, was accused of making more than $276 million in illicit profits based on tips about Elan Corp and Wyeth LLC, which was bought by Pfizer in late 2009.

8. Bharara was featured in Time Magazine’s 2012 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. He was also featured on a cover of the magazine titled, “This Man Is Busting Wall Street” because of his office’s work in prosecuting insider trading and financial crime.

9. Under Bharara’s leadership in 2010, the SDNY federal prosecutor’s office brought terrorism charges against suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Bout, a former Soviet air force officer dubbed the “Merchant of Death,” was accused of trafficking arms to dictators and conflict zones throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, according to Reuters. He was convicted in November 2011.

- Compiled from agencies