INSIDER TRADING UNDEFINED: 3/4: Uneven Justice: The Plot to Sink Galleon, by Raj Rajaratnam
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Uneven-Justice-Plot-Sink-Galleon/dp/1637582811/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Raj Rajaratnam, the respected founder of the iconic hedge fund Galleon Group, which managed $7 billion and employed 180 people in its heyday, chose to go to trial rather than concede to a false narrative concocted by ambitious prosecutors looking for a scapegoat for the 2008 financial crisis. Naively, perhaps, Rajaratnam had expected to get a fair hearing in court. As an immigrant who had achieved tremendous success in his adopted country, he trusted the system. He had not anticipated prosecutorial overreach—inspired by political ambition—FBI fabrications, judicial compliance, and lies told under oath by cooperating witnesses. In the end, Rajaratnam was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in prison. He served seven and a half.
Meanwhile, not a single senior bank executive responsible for the financial crisis was even charged.
Uneven Justice is the story of his bewildering and confounding prosecution by forces who, quite frankly, were looking for bigger game. When Rajaratnam refused to support the narrative that would make that happen, he and the Galleon Group became collateral damage.
A cautionary tale with implications for us all, Uneven Justice is both a riveting page-turner and an eye-opening lesson in the vagaries of justice when an unscrupulous prosecutor is calling the shots.
1918 WALL STREET
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is TBSI and the world. I'm John Bachelor with Raj Rajaratnam, arrested in October of 2009. |
| 0:14.2 | On trial for 18 months before the U.S. Southern District of New York, |
| 0:19.6 | Pritbarra is the U.S. attorney. |
| 0:21.8 | The prosecutors are different names but they're all |
| 0:24.4 | following the direction of of the office and the trial consists of a way of |
| 0:30.8 | demonstrating to the jury what it is that Raj and I were just talking about, |
| 0:35.4 | what is a hedge fund long and short, and the idea of what is insider training, |
| 0:41.3 | which at the time was not carefully defined as noted by |
| 0:45.3 | Pritbar himself many years later in a commission in 2020 not to find so So an old saw in law is that juries don't respond to facts. Juries respond to stories. |
| 1:01.1 | The prosecution is wise that tells a story to the jury about what the perpetrator, |
| 1:07.0 | what the alleged perpetrator has done. |
| 1:10.0 | With Raj's case, I would expect it to have been testimony by people who were telling him |
| 1:16.2 | things that were insider trading. |
| 1:19.2 | And yet Raj, I am flabbergasted to learn in your telling that the government called none of the names |
| 1:26.0 | of people who were said to have passed on insider information to Galleon. |
| 1:31.7 | Why didn't they call all those people that you spend your time |
| 1:34.8 | investigating? So that question requires a multifaceted answer. |
| 1:43.0 | Number one, it was a case that was all over the newspapers, |
| 1:48.6 | and the prosecutor wanted to win at all costs, |
| 1:52.3 | not getting. wanted to win at all course not get the truth out. |
| 1:57.0 | They did not call any insider, the one that was alleged to have given the tip. |
| 2:03.0 | What was alleged to have given the tip. |
... |
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