NEW YORK — A one-time billionaire hedge-fund founder tapped ex-classmates and longtime friends at public companies for secrets to earn tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits, a prosecutor said Wednesday at the only trial to result from what the government calls the biggest hedge-fund insider- trading probe ever.
“Greed and corruption. That’s what this case is all about,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Streeter told the federal jury in Manhattan at the start of his opening statement in the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, who founded the now- defunct Galleon Group LLC family of hedge funds in 1997. Rajaratnam, 53, remained still as Streeter described securities-fraud crimes in stark terms, repeatedly pointing at the defendant.
Given his turn, defense lawyer John Dowd said, “the evidence will show the government has it wrong. And the government has it wrong because it believed the word of unbelievable people.”
He said Rajaratnam spent $300 million annually at Galleon on research and called it the best in the business to the benefit of pension funds, wealthy individuals and hard-working citizens.
