Trump’s Choice of Bharara Sends Message: We’ll Bust Corporate Criminals

But Wood believes the president-elect still wants to hold the wealthy and powerful accountable "whether they are Wall Street bankers or Albany politicians." And that's just what Bharara has done in the past.

For instance on Wednesday the prosecutor's civil fraud office announced a major verdict in a corporate misconduct case. A federal jury found companies formerly known as Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. and Allied Home Mortgage Corp., as well as Allied's CEO, liable for financial fraud against the Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance program for over a decade. The jury awarded over $100 million in damages against the three defendants, and a judge could triple the damage amount under federal law.

And last month Bharara announced the arrests of the former CEO of Philidor Rx Services along with a former executive of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar fraud and kickback scheme.

"The decision to keep Bharara suggests that the Feds will continue to keep the pressure on C-suite executives to adopt and maintain strong compliance programs for their companies," Wood says. "So the message for in-house counsel and corporate executives is not only to follow the law, but also to get serious about having an effective compliance program to prevent wrongdoing from occurring in the first place."