Fall of the Hammer – Rajaratnam convicted

Hedge fund billionaire and founder of the Galleon Group, Raj Rajaratnam, who has been at the centre of the biggest insider trading case in the history of US was found guilty in a verdict on May 11, 2011. Rajaratnam was found guilty on all 14 counts - five relating to conspiracy and the balance concerning securities fraud. All this confirmed the prosecution case that Rajaratnam ran a net of highly-placed insiders between 2003 and 2009, who commanded the ability to sneak valuable corporate secrets. At the end, a federal jury found Rajaratnam guilty of trading on illegal tips from corporate executives, bankers, consultants, traders, and directors of public companies, including Goldman Sachs, Hilton, Google and Intel. The Galleon chief was accused of amassing wealth over $63.8 million as illegal earnings from trade based secrets. The prosecution contended that trading was illegally carried out on at least 15 stocks, many of them technology companies such as chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and ATI Technologies Inc and search engine Google Inc.

Fall of the Hammer – Rajaratnam convicted barandbench.com Tue, May 17, 2011