Jury out in Galleon case
THE fate of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam was in the hands of a jury yesterday, after Wall Street’s biggest insider-trading trial in two decades approached its climax.
In a case that featured FBI phone taps and former friends who testified against him, Rajaratnam, the founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, was accused of running a complex web of highly placed tipsters, including hedge fund colleagues and public company executives, between 2003 and March 2009. Prosecutors said he made $63.8m (£38.7m) illegally.
Rajaratnam’s defence countered that his trades were guided by analysis and public information.
Jury deliberations began yesterday in the Manhattan federal court trial. Rajaratnam, 53, faces five counts of conspiracy and nine counts of securities fraud for trading on stocks such as Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, Google and Goldman Sachs Group.