NEW YORK: Raj Rajaratnam was a top student,
brilliant trader, then Wall Street's ultimate whizz kid, and, by
all accounts, a good and loving man. But he was also a cheat.
And on Thursday, that one flaw in his glittering record caught up
with him. A man used to counting dollars by the millions and
billions had a new number to contend with: 11 years behind bars for
insider trading.
It was the biggest sentence ever in a US court for insider trading,
which New York federal Judge Richard Holwell called "a virus that
needs to be eradicated."
The sentence might have been higher had Holwell not decided to take
into account Raj's need for an "imminent" kidney transplant.
Raj, 54, was told he would be allowed to remain free until
November28, when he must surrender to start his sentence.
But as he walked out of the Manhattan courthouse, there was no
illusion about his disgrace: a mob of news photographers pushed and
jostled, one of them falling on his back, as they rammed their
lenses in the face of the former big shot.
Raj was born in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo and attended
England's University of Sussex, where he studied engineering. He
put that analytical mind to good use at the prestigious Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in
1983 with an MBA.
From there -- already well connected with other Wharton graduates
-- he rose rapidly up the Wall Street ladder, with a specialty in
high-tech stocks.
And at the age of 34, he started his own fund.
In 1997, the Galleon group was launched. The hedge fund quickly
amassed accounts through investments from Raj's ever-growing circle
of contacts and friends.
Raj appeared unstoppable, becoming emblematic of the new hedge fund
culture, amassing US$1.5 billion in personal wealth, according to
Forbes, and managing US$7 billion at Galleon at its peak.
But there was more than brilliance and a huge team of researchers
behind that success. In 2008, prosecutors and the FBI began
listening to wire-tapped phones used by Raj and associates in Wall
Street's biggest insider trading probe.
What they found was shocking -- and might well have stayed secret
if not for the recorded phone conversations.
Raj's job was to develop contacts and research companies, then read
into the future of the market. Instead, he was being told the
future before it happened.
Using his network, he discovered market-moving news before it had
been made public, whether it was involving Goldman Sachs, Intel,
Google or other big companies, then traded on the supposedly secret
information and made tens of millions of dollars.
Prosecutors said these were not mere slip-ups in Raj's ethics, but
part of a careful, coordinated strategy.
Raj was "born into privilege" and "rose to the top of the
securities industry," prosecutor Reed Brodsky said at the
sentencing. Yet he ended as "the modern face of illegal insider
trading."
There was a better side to the man everyone knew as Raj. In a world
where the super rich routinely give money to charities, the
convicted insider trader apparently really meant to help, whether
it was victims of the Sri Lankan Civil War, of an earthquake in
Pakistan or of the 9/11 attacks.
"The defendant's response to and care for the less privileged go
considerably beyond the norm," Holwell said.
But even if his sentence is less than half the maximum demanded by
prosecutors, Raj's fate will serve as a grim example to others on
Wall Street tempted to skirt the rules.
"No one here or anyone running a hedge fund would wish to trade
places with Mr Raj," his own lawyer said.
- AFP/ck
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i wonder why nobody was punished for the lehmann problem.
i wonder why no one in Goldman-Sachs was punished for the Greek
problem
Because Lehmann, Goldman, and Sachs are fucking Jews!!!
The American economy sucks! It is controlled by the Jews!
The Jew sucks !!
The Americans will always side the Jews and side Israel no
matter how wrong they are, how despicable they are, how evil they
are! This is the truth! Go ask any americans!
Lehman Brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Lehman
Marcus Goldman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Goldman
Samuel Sachs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Sachs
and so Mr Raj the Abunene will be treated like shit
because he is not a Jew !!!
