Raj Rajaratnam

Raj Rajaratnam (Tamil: ராஜ் ராஜரத்தினம்; born Rajakumaran Rajaratnam; June 15, 1957) is a Sri Lankan-American former hedge fund manager and billionaire founder of the Galleon Group, a New York-based hedge fund management firm. On October 16, 2009, he was arrested by the FBI on allegations of insider trading, which also caused the Galleon Group to close. He stood trial in U.S. v Rajaratnam (09 Cr. 01184) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and on May 11, 2011 was found guilty on all 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. On October 13, 2011, Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined a criminal and civil penalty of over $150 million combined.

As of January 14, 2013 Rajaratnam is incarcerated at Federal Medical Center, Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, an administrative facility housing male offenders requiring specialized or long-term medical or mental health care. Rajaratnam's release date is July 4, 2021.

Background and career

Rajat Gupta

Rajat Kumar Gupta ([ɾɔdʒot̪ kumaɾ ɡupt̪o]; born 2 December 1948) is an American businessman and philanthropist who is currently serving a two-year term in U.S. federal prison for insider trading. He was the first foreign-born Managing Director (chief executive) of management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company from 1994 to 2003. He was also a board member of corporations including Goldman Sachs, Procter and Gamble and American Airlines, as well as an advisor to non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Additionally, he is the co-founder of the Indian School of Business, American India Foundation, New Silk Route and Scandent Solutions.

He was convicted in June 2012 on insider trading charges of four criminal felony counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. He was sentenced in October 2012 to two years in prison, an additional year on supervised release and ordered to pay $5 million in fines. His conviction was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court on March 25, 2014. He then lodged an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court which was subsequently upheld on April 20, 2015. An application to remain free until the court determined whether it would hear the appeal was denied on June 11, 2014 leaving Gupta having to commence his two-year prison term on June 17, 2014.

Galleon Group

The Galleon Group was one of the largest hedge fund management firms in the world, managing over $7 billion, before closing in October 2009. The firm was the center of a 2009 insider trading scandal.

The firm was founded by Raj Rajaratnam, a former equity research analyst and eventual president of Needham & Company, in 1997. The New York headquartered firm was named for the galleon, a large sailing ship used from the 16th to 18th centuries in Europe.

Insider trading investigation

In October 2009 Rajaratnam and five others were arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud and insider trading. Rajaratnam pleaded not guilty and remained free on $100 million bail, the largest in United States history. He was indicted by a grand jury in December 2009 and found guilty in U.S. District Court on 14 charges in May 2011. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell to 11 years in prison on October 13, 2011.

Other former and current traders at Galleon were subsequently arrested and charged with contributing to the alleged conspiracy. Several former employees of the firm have cooperated in the investigation. As of January 2012 over fifty people have been convicted or pleaded guilty to date in the sprawling probe stemming from Galleon (not all of them Galleon employees).

United States

Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories and various possessions. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.842 million km²) and with over 320 million people, the country is the world's third or fourth-largest by total area and the third most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Anil Kumar

Anil Kumar (born 1958) was a top senior partner and director at management consultancy McKinsey & Company, where he co-founded McKinsey's offices in Silicon Valley and India and created its Internet practice (representing a quarter of McKinsey's business at the time) among others. Kumar is additionally the co-founder of the Indian School of Business with Rajat Gupta and the creator of two different kinds of outsourcing. He graduated from IIT Bombay in India, Imperial College in the UK, and The Wharton School in the US.

In 2010 he pleaded guilty to insider trading in a dramatic “descent from the pinnacle of the business world.” He was the government's first cooperator and most important witness “in two of the most important securities fraud trials in history” against close friends and business partners Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire founder of the Galleon Group family of hedge funds, and Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey and Company and a board member of Goldman Sachs and Procter and Gamble. Rajaratnam and Gupta were both convicted in separate high-profile criminal trials. He was sentenced in 2012 by Judge Denny Chin to two years of probation in exchange for testimony against former friends Rajanatram and Gupta. Chin stated that “greed wasn't the motive in [Kumar's] case” and that “this was aberrational conduct ... Mr. Kumar has led a law-abiding and productive life.” Federal prosecutors called Kumar “one of the best and most important cooperating witnesses” they had ever worked with.