Rajaratnam Sentenced To 11 Years For Insider Trading

Galleon Group co-founder Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Thursday for insider trading. The billionaire was also fined $10 million for securities fraud. Prosecutors referred to Rajaratnam as "the modern face of illegal insider trading," according to Bloomberg. The charges against the hedge fund manager accused him of making in excess of $72 million by trading on illegal tips that he received from a network of technology and financial insiders. The illegal trades took place in prominent stocks such as Intel INTC, Goldman Sachs GS and Google GOOG among others. Prosecutors said that the case was the largest uncovered incidence of insider trading in U.S. history and more than two dozen people have been convicted. “Raj Rajaratnam's criminal conduct was brazen, arrogant, harmful and pervasive,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan Streeter, Reed Brodsky and Andrew Michaelson said in court papers. “He corrupted old friends. He corrupted subordinates. He corrupted entire markets. Day after day, month after month, year after year, Rajaratnam operated as a billion-dollar force of deception and corruption on Wall Street.” It is quite a fall for the billionaire who ran one of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street. At its peak in 2008, Galleon Group managed $7 billion and Rajaratnam himself was worth $1.3 billion, which made him the 559th richest person in the world according to Forbes in 2009. Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of between 19 years and seven months to 24 and a half years, according to Bloomberg. Conversely, defense attorneys had asked for a sentence between 6 and a half years to 8 years.