CORRECT:3rd UPDATE: Galleon's Rajaratnam, Others Charged In Insider Case
October 16 2009 - 12:59PM
Dow Jones News
Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and five others have been
arrested and charged in an $20 million insider-trading case,
prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Rajaratnam, the founder of the
Galleon Group and portfolio manager for the Galleon Technology
Funds, has been charged with four counts of conspiracy and eight
counts of securities fraud.
Galleon, at one point, had as much as $7 billion in assets under
management.
Others charged criminally in the case include Rajiv Goel,
director in strategic investments at Intel Corp.'s (INTC)
investment arm; Anil Kumar, a director at global
management-consulting firm McKinsey & Co.; Danielle Chiesi and
Mark Kurland of New Castle Partners LLC, the one-time equity hedge
fund group at Bear Stearns Asset Management Inc.; and Robert
Moffat, a senior vice president at International Business Machines
Corp. (IBM).
A call to Galleon Group wasn't immediately returned Friday.
An Intel spokesman declined comment.
Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, is expected to
discuss the case in more detail at a press conference at 1 p.m. EDT
Friday.
He will be joined by representatives from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the SEC.
The allegations put Rajaratnam at the center of several insider
trades in which he allegedly caused Galleon funds to act on inside
information or passed along tips to others.
In one instance, prosecutors allege that Rajaratnam, between
January 2006 and July 2007, received nonpublic information about
Polycom Inc. (PLCM), Hilton Hotels Corp. and Google Inc. (GOOG) and
caused Galleon Technology Funds to make improper trades on that
information. As a result, the Galleon fund earned more than $12.7
million, prosecutors said.
Google declined to comment.
In another instance, Chiesi, the New Castle employee, allegedly
received inside information regarding Akamai Technologies Inc.
(AKAM) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) from an unnamed Akamai
executive and Moffat, the IBM executive, prosecutors said.
She allegedly passed the information to Rajaratnam, who
allegedly provided her with information regarding AMD and other
publicly traded companies, the government said.
As a result of information Chiesi allegedly received from
Rajaratnam, Moffat and others, New Castle earned a profit of more
than $2.4 million, prosecutors said.
As an example, Chiesi allegedly called Rajaratnam on his cell
phone in a wiretapped telephone call on July 24, 2008, to tell him
that Akamai was planning to "guide down" the next Wednesday and
internally the company expected its stock price was going to go
down to $25 a share, prosecutors said.
Rajaratnam allegedly said he would be "radio silent" about the
information and told her she had "a few more days" before they
report, prosecutors said. She allegedly replied "Just keep shorting
every day. We got a lot of days..."
After the company announced its expected earnings for the
following quarter would be lower than analyst expectations,
Rajaratnam allegedly called Chiesi to thank her for the information
she provided, according to prosecutors.
(Jenny Strasburg of the Wall Street Journal contributed to this
story.)
-By Chad Bray, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-227-2017;
chad.bray@dowjones.com