Raj Rajaratnam: a whizz kid who cheated
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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===============
i wonder why nobody was punished for the lehmann problem.
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i wonder why no one in Goldman-Sachs was punished for the Greek problem
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Originally posted by dragg:
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===============
i wonder why nobody was punished for the lehmann problem.
Originally posted by the Bear: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_Sachsand so Mr Raj the Abunene will be treated like shit because he is not a Jew !!!
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